How to Honor Your Elders

In our culture, the young are worshiped like gods. While there are many qualities about youth worth celebrating, like unrestrained ambition and effortless energy, there is also much to celebrate about growing older, like earned success and experienced perspective. It is a rare young person who can truly appreciate the beauty and contributions of the generations ahead of him or her. It is worth doing, however, because mingling with people of all ages helps add richness and a broadened perspective to your life. Here's how to begin paying homage to those with more life experience than you.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Expand your definition of beauty. Scantily-clad, digitally-enhanced, 20-year old models on the covers of glossy magazines do have the cornerstone beauty--however, beauty is in the eye of the beholder--so make sure that your eye beholds beauty in all its forms, sexes and ages.
2. Pay attention. A friend of mine in her 60s once said to me: "I feel invisible to the world." My mother and her friends have expressed the same sentiment. Make an effort to engage people beyond your peer group as you go about your day.
3. Discover their stories. Whether the "elders" you're talking to are 20 or 60 years older than you, you can guarantee that they've got stories from their past to entertain, touch, educate and inform your view of the world. Try starting the conversation with the question: "What were you like when you were my age?"
4. Seek their counsel. Feeling stuck at work? Struggling with a relationship? Uncertain of your next life step? Get advice from somebody with many years of life experience on you. They will offer a perspective that your peers cannot.
5. Include them in your life. Teach them something new. Make a regular date. In college, my friend brought her grandmother to class with her one Friday a month. Another friend of mine shares music with a friend 30 years older than him. They go to concerts, buy each other CDs and occasionally jam together on the guitars. And another girl I know rides on a bike team composed of women in their 20s and in their 60s. They call themselves "Boomers and Bloomers."
6. Cultivate friends of all ages. My friends range in age from 11 to 72. Having relationships with people of varied generations who are not blood relatives keeps my social life varied, vibrant and stimulating.
7. Lose your sense of invincibility. Believe it or not, comprehend it or not, you will be an "elder" some day too. How do you want people to treat you once you get there? Do you really believe that you are currently in the best years of your life and it's all down hill from here? The way you behave now will help pave the way for how the older generations are treated once you're part of them.