Our senior citizens are valuable, but ignored treasure

This week, I looked at the back of my hands.

There are dozens of hard-earned scars on them and, in places the skin is off thanks to too much sun over the past month. They have turned into my late father’s hands.

My father passed away 12 years ago and sometimes I still miss him.

“You’re a cookie-cutter copy of your dad,” people often say when they see my picture on Facebook. I can hardly think of a bigger compliment. He worked hard to care for his family, he was proud of his children and he loved his
wife.

But most important – he had a soft heart and was brimming with goodness. When I was 18, he was the most
ill-informed, unintelligent person on earth. At 28, I thought he was the wisest man I have ever met. It’s remarkable how much that old man has learned in just 10 years.

Unfortunately, age is not respected much in our modern society. We believe in cheap consumer products that have to be disposed of when they reach a certain age. And a lot of us handle people the same way. Admittedly, not everyone grows wiser with age. Some of us develop grey hair without cultivating wisdom to accompany it.

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As the court jester told the king in Shakespeare’s King Lear: “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”

But, on average, older people have years of experience and accumulated wisdom. We can use it well in our country – we have a crippling shortage of both, after all. We have a long way to go if we want to change this country into
the showpiece of Africa. We will have to use all the resources that we have at our disposal.

Our senior citizens happen to be our single most valuable, most ignored treasure. Their vast knowledge is available to us – we’re shunning their contribution at our own peril.

Tonight in bed, I will rub cream on my hands. The old fashioned kind with camphor in it, like my mother believes in. They’re old hands and that makes them treasures.

But if they remain looking like my dad’s, I won’t mind too much. My biggest concern will be how to turn the rest of me into my father, too.