Sunday, February 8, 2009

Current Feelings About Old People

After interviewing my grandparents, I have a better understanding about them. Before starting this topic about old people, I realized they are not really in my daily life. I have never forgotten them, but they are just not always in my mind. But as learning about them, I start thinking about the old people that I know that has been around me. It actually takes awhile to think about them which makes me feel like old people are not really "online". Their status is more like "idle". After the week of learning about old people, it reminds me that I actually talk to old people a lot when I was in China. From my experience talking with them, I noticed that both me and them do not really have a generation gap between each other because we are 2 generations away from each other. Generation gap more likely to occur between my generation and my parents' generation. Talking with old people, we both avoid to talk about the things that we do not know because we both know that we are verydifferent from each other and why even bother to bring up something that we will not know. It is more likely that I will ask them about their past, and they are always more than welcome to share their stories with you. I do not really have a wise old person giving me advice about how to live, but I do talk to them when I see them. Based on my own experience, I never think old people is annoying or slow. Perhaps it is just from my family, that we have a lot of old people often in the same house. So everytime when I go to my grandma's house, theres always a lot of old people in the village. I don't feel we have a distance between each other and I always talk to them as friends. Like my grandpa, althought he is slow on computers, I chat with my grandpa through webcam on the internet. Even though it is hard to talk with the old people since they are elders and we should respect them, we still ask them about their health and life. I noticing that old people like to have attentions from the youngster. When they feel like they are being accepted by their grandchildren, they often seem to be very happy. Especially when they see their descendants are healthy and happy, they look happier than we do.

I think the old people like to isolate themselves from the young people and build up their own group. They see us as the "young ones" and they think we do not like them because they are slow. Thus, it turn out to be that we are apart from each other. Also, the old people like to give up on themselves and have not even try to be with the young people. They see themselves as one group and they do not want to be with the young people because they know they do not belong. The old people do have the ability to learn computer or playing video games, but they often seem to give up on it. In addition, they are very simple minded and they do not think as much as we do in now a day. They define happiness a lot different from us. They cares about their family the most and they seem to be more selfless and just wish the descendants are happy. Although they never talk about death in front of me before except from this time's interview, they do not really talk about it. They seem to be prepare and know it will come to them in anytime. They are very clam about it and see life as a walking tour like like the video describe below.

Walking Tour

No comments: