Article January 27, 1997 Issue

How to bridge the generation gap

Katherine Hildreth

Are you wondering what to do about sometimes feeling cut off from younger members of your family? Or young people in general? Is there a big gap there? If so, I know just how you feel. And I've found that the best way to bridge this gap is never to let one get established in the first place. I'm convinced that in large part this depends on so-called old people refusing to be old. I mean refusing to get those attitudes: of conformity demanding conformity, of complacency demanding protection. And all those unlovely characteristics that the world so often attaches to oldness—impatience, opinionatedness, prejudice, inflexibility, fear of change, resistance to newness.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy offers very good insights on this subject: "Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom" (p. 248). And I'm certain that as long as we of "riper years" continue to ripen instead of lapse, and involve ourselves with people of all ages instead of just holing up together and talking to nobody but each other, there won't be any generation gaps.

My mother was a prime example of a non-lapsing lady of riper years. She loved God and knew that He had created her and that she was inseparable from Him. So what did a lot of calendar years between generations matter? When I was windowed long ago, my two little boys and I moved in with her. It was supposed to be temporary, but we ended up staying sixteen years—three generations of us living a joyous life together.

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