What Can We Do?

In order to change the world, I think first I have to change myself. I have to get rid of all the stigmas that I have learned throughout my life and start to think about what’s wrong on the media and society. Once I have looked into my own prejudices and privileges, I can start inspiring people by doing what any other person would do. Work hard so that my community could prosper and try to think of the consequences of my actions and words before I act on them. And not wait for somebody else do the work for me. It is true what June Jordan said: “we are the ones we have been waiting for”. We can make a difference.

If all of us would do that, then there would be no discrimination and no oppression. But we think that is just wishful thinking. That not everyone is going to do that because humans are greedy by nature. Even if that might be true, we can still do something to change things for the better if everyone gives their support, as little as it may be, as long as it helps our society. Just as Angela Davis said, “please get involved, please try to make a difference, please try to turn this country around”.

Age Diversity

My social sphere is really not formed by all kinds of diversity. I say that I rarely encounter young people that much, specially kids. The place that I spent my life the most for now is college. I do encounter the elder more than the young people when I get home for break though. I like the interactions that I have with the elder, but it’s really hard for me to talk to the youth. I guess I think that I have more important things to do than spend it with younger people.

As a lot of people have said in their posts, we think that the elder slow us down in a world where everything is fast paced and some people think that they young don’t have anything new to say, or that they are not important because they haven’t lived enough. Young adults and middle-age adults are privileged because they can do anything they want, they are old enough to do them unlike younger people, and they have the energy and the capability of doing things that for the elder people is harder to do.

I think that we should consider what the young have to say. Maybe they have a better insight than some adults. And also we should encourage them in all the positive things because they are the future of society. We need to respect our elders because they have helped us built the culture that we live in. One way of doing that is giving them all the possibilities for them to do their dreams.

Living Old

A young person always thinks about the next thing to do on the to-do list, waking up for a new day and to be as active as always. But when you become older, you realize that you cannot do the same things you used to do. The young people never think about what’s going to happen to them when that happens, so they don’t even bother thinking about how the elderly deal with their situation. We take for granted that most of the elderly have been working and have been helping this country to grow. This makes me think that I am ageist. I always thought that when my time comes, then I’ll just die happy, but there are so many things to worry about than just that. The video “Living Old” presented me with a lot of questions regarding all these complicated decisions that we have to make. Like deciding if it’s time for you to go, or all the complications that sickness and living older brings.

Last year, my grandfather died, I think he was 80 years old or something like that. He was the first close person to me to die. I really felt hopeless but then I said to myself that live goes on. Ever since I was young I thought that when you died then everything would be okay. But I recently talked to one of my aunts and we were discussing death. She said something that I never thought before. She said that some people, even though they are old, don’t want to die yet because there are so many things that have not been accomplished yet, and they want to do something to help. This has made me think that ageism is wrong and the way I would be against it is to help the elderly accomplish all their goals so that they can rest in peace.