A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man’s age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944, translated from French by Norah Purcell.
THE?YOUNG?OFTEN MISS?THE?POINT in the honour of growing old. It is an imagery too far in advance for many of them to contemplate.
And if they would imagine, their picture of the elderly is often of decrepitude and valuelessness – their seniors’ time already gone. The corollary is that most of the nation’s seniors do not regret growing older, for they know it is a privilege denied many.
Still there is a tinge of sorrow, as there is a burden of worry, in National Committee On Ageing chairman Maizie Barker-Welch’s declaration that she was concerned for the aged in Barbados. She seemed expressly concerned that the ageing – those who had carried this nation all these years – could look forward to too few young ready or able to take up the mantle.
And Mrs Barker-Welch would let us all know that “there would be no Barbados today” had it had not been for the aged population.
“They are the ones,” she told the congregation at a special church service at the Whitepark Wesleyan Holiness Church last Sunday to celebrate the 102nd birthday of Louisa Neblett, “who sacrificed when they were young. Some of them had to give up going to school in order to help out . . . .”
Mrs Barker-Welch is concerned, and not without some justification, about the state in which Barbados will be when the younger generation must take over.
“. . . Because many of the young people [whom] I know can’t even read the Bible properly, although they go to school . . . .”
Such circumstances do not augur well for throwing up any great number of good leaders for the future.
When we examine the many contributions that come through the electronic media, the political hub, and the public social networking, there is not much that speaks to excellence in manner or execution. For a country whose Government spends millions on educating our people year after year, we stress with our youth form over substance.
We spend an inordinate amount of time having them qualified rather than qualifying them for the tasks ahead that are rooted in leadership – good and urgent leadership.