Dear LPG,

On a recent visit to the internet I found these two YouTube clips and thought that younger members of my family might benefit from some of the advice included in the videos. 

I watched it with my young nephew and my grandson (although, when you get to my age everyone is relatively young).  My nephew is now fifty-one years old while my grandson thinks that he knows it all at the age of twenty-three, and I suppose that age is relative, but they will both always be ‘young’ from my point of view.   While we watched the life lessons on offer, my family members’ different perceptions of what they watched produced some interesting comments which, when added to mine, really opened my eyes to the great differences between the generations we each represent.

I listened to what these two had to say on the subject of where they saw themselves when they get to my age, what they plan to do to ensure that they have no regrets and what they think that I might have done better.  Their observations were really interesting but I found all three of us discovered areas where we needed to disagree with each other. 

It reminded me that the one variable that they missed when passing their comments is that, in my estimation, they may have the computers and mobile phones that we did not have in our younger days but this generation could not have the inventions were it not for past evolution.  They were not the only ones who lived through an age of new technology.  The fact is that new technology ages faster than ever these days but it is still an evolutionary process.

When with friends of my own age I hear them argue about how the youngsters of today are irresponsible while they tend to focus on what they want to do at the expense of other things which they will come to regret in their later lives.   But, I have to say that not that much will have changed. 

If I am honest, when I was young, like so many of the twenty somethings of this time, I was thought of as pretty reckless by my parent’s standards and I don’t think that I was unique. 

There are just two more comments that I have to make. 

The first is that we have to make the mistakes, no matter how young or old we are, in order to grow and learn from them; and the second is that perhaps the young can learn from such videos but we oldies need to remember that no one is ever too old to learn and that every generation has something to teach those around them.

WB, Lewisham

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