Ageism that’s, observed here, in Taiwan, and it needs to, change! Translated…
Father’s Day is almost here again, some of the clients came to my shop, to buy the canes for their fathers, hoped to give their father a delicate gift, and also, for their fathers, to be able to walk more steadily. This sort of a goodwill is originally looked upon as good, but, a lot of my clients shared the same experiences—getting scolded by their father, “I’m not that old, I don’t need a cane!”, and, this sort of a rebuttal made the children feel upset. All of their kindness toward their fathers, weren’t taken as such, and, they’d gotten, scolded for it, both parties were, angered by this.
Actually, the canes aren’t the problem, it’s because the elders don’t want to be labeled as “Old”, because in their minds, cane=old=useless, in need of being taken care of.
In the past, “old” is associated with wisdom, experiences, something that’s, finally come to us, after a lifetime’s worth of hard work. But, don’t know when, “old” started having that negative tone to it. As the media paints up a portrait of elderly, they normally equate old, frail, illness, handicap, poverty. All the footages of elderly we see on T.V. are of the elderly wheeled out to the parks by the foreign nurses’ aides; our soap operas portrayed the elders as “evil mothers-in-law”, or “stubborn old men”; or someone who’s “ill, living in poverty, very pitiful”, they’d, specially pointed out how the elderly had, detached from the society, to make the shows funnier to watch.
And, as the government drafted up the plan for elderly caretaking, they’d focused on the lacking in resources, the government paid retirement pensions going bankrupt, along with the slowing down the growth in economy…
Due to the lack of empathy, as we shopped, the clerks would impatient when the elderly took too long to ask them questions; in restaurants, with great turnover rates, the elderly would get shunned for taking too long to eat there. And the busses would start driving, before the elders sat themselves down. There were, news of how elderly had tripped and fallen on the busses because the driver was rushing off.
In actuality, the reforms shouldn’t only happen on the public transportation systems, but in the entire society, to reeducate, to rid the public of the beliefs of ageism. Recently, a 92-year-old new prime minister was elected in Malaysia, this was, never imagined possible in the Taiwanese society.
And so, Taiwan is not the only society that’s not unfriendly toward the elderly in the population I’m sure, but, because this is where we live, we’d, criticized the systems, hoping, that it can, change, because we will all be, elderly one day, and we don’t want what’s happening to the elderly right now, to happen to us all, do we? Naturally not, so, we must, start this, “REVOLUTION” to turn over the beliefs of being old is being useless!
Life, the Obstacle Course 