Article February 3, 1997 Issue

Embracing all generations in love

Lacy Bell Richter

If you're a senior citizen, do you sometimes feel an urgent need to rethink your attitude toward those of another generation? Maybe you sense the moral and spiritual wrongness of ignoring other age-groups. What stops us from being interested in those who belong to the juvenile or married or career group? Perhaps we tend to see them as a generation below or outside our lifestyle. But if we're ready to rethink this view of ourselves and others, an invigorating new "reason for being" emerges—one that enables us to see everyone in a new way.

We realize we've misjudged others by seeing them as separate from God, the one creator. We realize that mankind is not a mass of mortals representing different generations. Instead, man is spiritual, God's own self-expression, therefore entirely good, intelligent, harmonious, and peace-loving. As this concept of man becomes the model by which we identify others, divisive generational labels disappear. We see others more as God knows them. This correct insight naturally frees us to love everyone, regardless of generation.

How can we maintain this spiritual concept in an environment unfamiliar to us and with people who seem "different"? We must be willing to adopt a purer, truer concept of humanity instead of clinging to a mortal view that labels others as unapproachable, remote from us—unknowable. A humbler, more receptive attitude opens the way for us to understand man as God's likeness, forever united with every other individual idea.

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