浮山狼de博客

Our elders already deserve our respect because they once took care of us.

When I was a child, I was regularly admonished to “respect your elders.” During those early years I knew that I had to respect them because they took care of me, gave me guidance when I had no direction of my own, and, I feared, could discipline me for refusing to bend to their will. Still, whether due to my own impatience or my incomplete grasp of the rules, I sometimes questioned my parents’ authority and often tested the limits they set for me. It was only years later that I began to see the wisdom in their ways and sought, rather than avoided, their counsel. I used to think it amazing that my dad seemed to know so much about practical psychology and that the people he worked with valued him and often sought his assistance. I now realize that so much of what I have come to value in myself I became because of my father and my mother. Continue reading »why should we respect our elders