by Tim Gray

Created on: October 19, 2008

Senior citizens are human treasure troves. They are valuable and precious beyond description. Seniors have gathered many decades of life experience that endow them with an almost unfathomable amount of human knowledge. The vast reservoir of problem solving expertise within each American senior citizen can only be attained by way of traveling life's arduous road. We are fools for allowing their often times frail appearances to dupe us into thinking their lives have grown to be of little tangible valuable.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The lack of well deserved respect and the subsequent dearth of dignity we display toward our senior citizens are the most important problems they face today. It is morally reprehensible and asinine to not recognize their value to society. The manner in which the winters of their lives play themselves out is an American tragedy.

Instead of resourcing them in times of life crisis and tribulation, we choose instead to warehouse them in senior centers and retirement homes, which are nothing more than glorified Sam's Clubs. Many are abandoned by their families to be seldom seen again, or forgotten entirely.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

With few exceptions, seniors are mellowed like fine wine and adept at taking whatever life throws at them. How many of the rest of us can boast the same? An alarming number of adults in our cities can't even operate automobiles, without outbursts of anger or inappropriate displays. How shameful! Vast numbers of American business people operate unscrupulously, as if free market principles mean free to pillage and plunder the innocent. Look at the recent financial crisis that abhorrent greed and lust for materialism has left this nation in.

If we'd only accessed the elderly tucked away in their cookie cutter retirement centers, they could have offered suggestion after suggestion of sage and time tested advice. Our seniors have mastered a life value that few, if any of us in our society's fast lane ever give a scintilla of thought.

Our seniors know life isn't about who gets wherever first or has accumulated the greatest amount of materialism. They know the human experience has a much larger purpose and meaning. They have learned to process life on its terms and not try to instead dictate their individual personal demands on life.

In other words they have mastered the value of acceptance.

Maturation has taught them that there is a greater purpose to life than whatever younger Americans might desire or covet. Maturation has given them an understanding that life is about the experiences we gather along the way, not the tangible trappings that can turn otherwise decent people into greedy, selfish and impatient ogres.

Our seniors see the value in thinking of others first and how compromise is the key to solving so many human disagreements.

Yet, there they sit or lie in their senior homes as if what they know, from a time tested and valued perspective, has no worth.

How much more foolish can a society be than to see the elderly as being of no meaningful contributive value at all? They deserve better. It's time we reassess our attitude about aging. It doesn't render humans worthless. Within their lives lie the answers to so many problems we face as individuals and a nation. Remember, the greatest teacher is experience.

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