When you apply for a job and fill out your resume, they will always have questions about your experience.
How long have you worked in a particular field, or do you have experience with any other area that you are applying for.
Experience is something that employers are always looking at.
In sports we always look at the veteran who has the experience to lead the team, the one who has already been in the same situation before and has come out with a victory.
Bret Farve is a good example of this.
Although he is one of the oldest quarterbacks to be still playing in the game, there is no price tag that you can put on the experience and the ability to be competitive and put your team in a situation where they can grab the victory.
Newlyweds are often counseled by older more experienced couples long after the wedding bells have chimed.
Their experience and years of working through the difficulties of raising a family and keeping a sound marriage intact are invaluable to the young couple.
With our society and our country so dependent on how experience plays such a vital role in almost everything we do, even in our recreation, why do we ignore the biggest source and one of the best reservoirs of experience in our country today, the senior members of our society.
It is a crime the way we treat our senior citizens.
The young people in our society today have absolutely no respect for older people.
They are looked down upon, they are just in our way, and they move to slow for the fast pace that this world is on, and we don't make the time to accommodate this vast resource of knowledge and experience.
We are just throwing away answers and help for so many situations that our country is facing today.
What we rather do is, put these people into a home where they are out of our way.
After all, we know better, we may stumble along with our lack of experience, but we will eventually figure it out.
How is that working out for us? I remember talking to my grand-father about his experiences during his time at Ford Motor Company.
He worked there when the unions were being formed and he had some incredible stories that he would share with us.
Being an a Ford worker myself and member of the UAW, I found his stories to be fascinating and I learned a great deal from his experiences.
My uncle, who landed on the beaches of Normandy, during World War ll, was another elder member of our society that I took great pleasure in hearing his stories as well, and some of them very difficult for him to recall.
Men from that period of time always had a difficult time revealing their feelings and emotions, and it was not easy for him to talk about those extremely painful times, but I think he also received some relief as he talked and let those feelings out.
Other cultures have a very different reverence for older people then we do here in America, and I think it is to our shame that we don't.
They place these people at a very high place in society and give them the needed respect and care that they deserve.
I was in Japan on a trip a very long time ago, and I saw firsthand, the respect and high place that an older person, just walking down the street, was given.
They even talked about their grandparents in a very different way than we do here.
Many of them lived with the family, rather than sending them off to a home.
I know that the world has changed, and that's even more reason we need to address this issue.
There is a young man that did a study on our senior citizens.
He moved into a senior complex, and just lived for a couple of months, and wrote about his experiences while he was there.
One thing that he noticed is this natural progression for everyone to help others.
Now some were very limited on what they could do, but with the resources they had they would reach out to the one who needed them the most.
This is totally the opposite from what we see in our world today.
I don't see that...
do you? He described a man who was suffering from a little dementia, but he remembered everyone's favorite candy.
Every day he would walk down the street to the dollar store, buy a candy for everyone, bring it back, and pass it out.
This might be a little thing for us, but something that meant and said a lot to them.
Another incident he told was of a lady who was very bright, witty, and funny, but she was strapped to a wheel chair and had a hard time getting around.
She would go to a table, where everyone was down and depressed, and not talking, and within a short period of time, have everyone in an uproar of laughter and smiles.
She was giving out what she knew best, to those who needed it.
Our senior citizens have lived and given so much to our society, and they have this enormous wealth of experience and information that we all need to tap into, and they are so willing to give us, if we only ask.
They still have so many ideas and plans that could help us with some of the many crisis's that we are facing today in this country.
As a matter of fact, some of our best thinking doesn't come until we have matured a little.
I see so much disdain and, "get out of my way", attitude in our country today, that it's scary.
We are breeding a generation of uncaring, "me first", individuals, that push their way through the crowd, knocking down anyone and anybody who gets in their way, and a lot of those people are our elderly.
We need to stop this cancer before it is inoperable.
There still is time.
It's not too late, but we need to act now.