[Anja]

More, cuz I'm workin' on hitting 100 posts today thus boosting my status hereabouts.)

I remind myself daily to create in mysef the person I want to be tomorrow cuz that's who I'm going to live with tomorrow! Make sense?

It's extremely valuable to start seeing one's elders as useful humans so that when/if you get there you aren't a victim of your own prejudices.

I'll go on:

Once upon a time people weren't so transient. I'll use our midwestern farmers as an example. A man and woman married and built a huge house upon their farm land. They raised many children as a necessity because farm work was hard manual labor.

Eventually their physical powers waned and the farm was deeded over to one of the oldest children, usually a male.

Then they often built a small house for themselves and lived on the land with their children. But they weren't useless. Grandma sat in her rocking chair and sewed quilts and tended the small children or, if she were able, cooked for the next generation's growing brood. She probably also served as the family historian, passing on information that helped provide the younger family members a sense of pride and identification.

Grandpa wandered about and made a general nuisance of himself telling the young men the "proper" way to farm. (See my sexist bias here?)

In that way, of financial necessity, the generations bonded and the elders' precious family values of dilligence and persistence were honored and passed to the next generation.

When Grandpa and grandma moved on, there was the small house for the grandchildren to bring their brides home to.

There was self-sufficiency and interdependency in that way of life which is rapidly disappearing.

Though I didn't belong to a farm family I have realized that there is a beautful simplicity in this way of life that promotes generational mutual respect. (With plenty of aggravation thrown in to spice things up, I suspect.) Well. And learning how to deal with aggravation in relationships, of necessity.

Do I sound like an old phart longing for days goneby yet? I'm in veritable agony! Hee.