Having a Voice

Old people, especially women, often say that they feel they are invisible. They can feel like unwanted outsiders in society, and may withdraw into isolation, in reality it's possible that we oldies collude in that. It's a form of ageism.

According to research by the Mather Institute the UK had the most negative ageist attitude, followed by a cluster of India, Bangladesh, Canada, the US, and Kenya. The most positive were Sri Lanka, followed by Ghana and Tanzania. "They found that ageism was not related to the proportion of older adults in the population or speed of ageing population growth. However, greater long-term orientation and greater masculine cultural dimensions were associated with greater ageism". "Ageism may be greater in these societies because they favour strength and competition, characteristics that are generally not associated with older adults". Conversely countries influenced by Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, such as Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam all value wisdom imparted by elders and treat them with a high degree of respect.

Fridays debate in the UK Parliament gave a voice to politicians on the issue of assisted dying. For once, it was a debate worth listening to. As a free vote there was no party affiliation & cross bench "yah booing". People actually listened to the points being well made. The voices on both sides were heard. I wish that happened all the time. 

We all have a voice, whatever our age, position in society, education & condition. The trouble is some voices are louder than others, some out shout more moderate voices. Some people even feel that their opinion is actually more important than others because of their intellect, education or status. These things may be important, but I think that experience matters more. 

We need to listen to people who know first hand what a situation is like. That is why we do need to listen to the voices of the elderly. They have years of experience of a huge variety of situations. They see repeating patterns & cycles & learn from them. 

On the other hand, we oldies really shouldn't "bang on" about our lives repetetively & boringly. We shouldn't be trapped in the past, it really wasn't necessarily that brilliant. We should be selective & just pass on the real nuggets of experience that might help in our current very complex world. 

We need to earn respect. It isn't a right.