What Elders Can Do to Make a Real Difference Now

By:  Sanderson Sims

The world today is a confusing, complex, and challenging a place for young adults.  Social media, climate change, toxic politics, questions of gender identity and unbridled technology all cloud their horizon. Is it time to invest in sharing your life’s wisdom with younger generations?   

I’ll admit I am a little further down life’s path than many. A career in advertising might have accelerated this, and, yes, I am past any desire to be out marching or standing on street corners to protest things with which I don’t agree. And, yes, I run into all kinds of people who feel the world they knew is slipping away in a way they cannot believe. But for those who study history they recognize that human patterns of action do repeat themselves over and over. But what is always profoundly new is the ever increasing advance of technology in our lives. 

Beliefs people want to have whether or not the facts support them now seem to work often at the expense of the truth. This seems demoralizing and un-empowering for many. 

Bad news hogs the air waves because money is made at the margins. People are driven to  the excitement and dopamine hits of bad and or sensational news as long as they can be viewed and experienced safely.  Advertisers spend money where the viewers are. Money spent in abundance can alter behavior because perceptions can be altered by exposure to frequency. And today with a smart phones in so many hands, the information bites are constant. 

The end result is that many lose sight of their personal power, both for their own good and those around them.

But what has not changed is your own point of power. No matter what is going on around you, you still have the same personal power you always had. You are always creating the space you want to be in. The issue is that the outer world is constantly creating new and challenging landscapes at what feels like an overwhelming rate and it is very easy to become untethered.

This issue of personal power needs to be visited and revisited as much as we can. I have written about manifestation and been fortunate to personally know leaders in this area such as the Caddy Family from Findhorn. There are people such as Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins, and an almost endless list of those who offer wisdom in this area. 

Information such as news and public opinion, for the most part, is driven from the top down. Yet, this new technology has also provided a silver lining: social media can be driven from the bottom up.

There was an interesting article appearing in “VOX” recently saying that a psychological study had shown that 95% of us respond to just being asked for help by those close to us.

I maintain there is a large silent number of people who are yearning for help, help  of some kind.

So here is where I am going with all of this. The one gift that most people in their 60’s and beyond possess is the ability to write, mainly because, like it or not, our teachers beat it into us. Secondly, our opinions formed from the social fabric of family, education, work and community experiences mean we have a degree of wisdom. Thirdly, a substantial number of younger people are adrift but they are glued to their phones. And the future will be their hands.

While you may not want to stand and wave  on a corner or march in a parade, the gift you have is that you can write! You can express yourself.

 You can write a social media comment, write to a political representative, start a blog, even become an influencer in this regard. You can light up the way. And the world can use a lot more light now — a lot more!