The Child is the Father of Man

As each day rolls by we grow older, little realizing that old age will be taking a toll on us very soon. Yet most young people have a firm belief that they will never age and hence become insensitive to the older people around them. The ever growing number of old age homes in a traditional country like India is an alarming development that needs to be checked as early as possible.

A random study of the civilisations across the globe reveals that mankind has certainly recognized the fact that it is inevitable that man grows older and experiences a deterioration of his faculties and general health over a period of time. In spite of this physical weakening, he grows stronger in spirit and emerges as a wise person which he derives from the various experiences of life. Perhaps an African proverb which goes, “A library dies when a old man dies” speaks in volumes of how the elderly were treated in the past.

Yet these days, most youngsters believe that caring for the aged is bearing them down as it is considered that it is their bounden duty to take care of them.

In an old fable, a man served his aged father gruel on a cracked plate day after day as he felt that he had no more benefits to reap from the old man. One day when the old man left home with disgust and melancholy because of the treatment meted out to him, the young grandson picked up the cracked plate, cleaned it and wrapped it up neatly in a brown paper. When the surprised father asked him to explain his action, the little boy said that he was keeping the plate so that he could serve gruel on the plate when his own father became old and infirm. This answer struck the father like a lightning and he immediately set off to find his own father filled with remorse and guilt.

Newton’s third law has certainly stood the test of time.

Threats apart, it can be certainly a rewarding experience when we are blessed wholeheartedly from old wise hearts who are in the evenings of their lives, after all did they not spend the best part of their lives caring for us? After all the child is the father of man!