When I was growing up, I had role models, people I looked up to for guidance those that I aspired to be like. These people affected and impacted my life with the things they did. On top of it all I respected and loved them.
Everyone wanted to relate with them, everyone wanted to brag about the idea that they are heroes or mentors or people who inspire them.
These people’s actions and speeches moved me to the extent that I wanted to be like them when I grew up. I wanted to pick a leaf from what they were doing and inspire, motivate young people with my actions.
These people were my elders who had gone through life and had learnt a lot. They were like fountains of wisdom and knowledge because they had experienced life in ways I had not yet understood. To me these were life warriors who had fought the war of life and won with knowledge which I wanted to tap in.
These elders made us feel safe in their generation and ours because they were greater elders in leadership positions. Everyone was interested in finding out how they did it, why they do it and what motivated them.
Why Were They Such Exemplary Leaders?
These people were not afraid to talk about the wrongs of the community and were willing to help improve them it. They lead because it was necessary and they could do it and they did it well. When they spoke the world listened and learnt from them.
Those days we used to make t-shirts with their faces on them and we moved around the streets very proud that we were wearing the faces of our heroes, the faces of the people who inspired us and we wanted the world to know about them.
Those people were either artists, leaders, parents, our elder siblings, our relatives and everyone who had to be a great character. These motivated writers to write books about them and these books are being read up to now.
What Happened To Those Kind Of Elders?
Today all we see and hear about our elders are wrong things from corruption to theft, rape, defilement. All the wrong things that strain the role modeling concept. It is no longer about what the community wants for one’s self. Personal gain is the agenda. no inspiration sent down from above. Wrong morals from nudists on stages to conspiracies and fights, to everything my mother told me was not acceptable in society.
We no longer have elders to be role models or heroes, no one can mentor or impact inspirations in the generation below us. Nothing for young people to look up to, we are all young people with a lost cause as my mother says.
“This generation has no future if everyone is for his own and no co-operation or teamwork.”
We have no one to hold our hands and lead the way, no one to tell us what is wrong or right, those who were supposed to do so have no right or authority to say so because they are not examples to learn from, they don’t know what is right.
We live in a world where our elders get on stage and undress in our faces, we live in a world where these same elders steal from us, rob from us in opendaylight. We live in a world where bad is considered good and we are happy about it. We are unguided and helpless with no role models or solid examples to back us.
Not all elders are as you subscribe. Yes we have too many of them trying to be young. Conscious elders are around. You just have to know where to look. Many of them are not on stage but in the community working to make things better.
Hello Nakato,
Actually am not looking at the ones on stage – that picture was an example – but generally speaking we have no upright role models in the limelight. Either the media limelighting them is focusing on the wrong elders or those are the at least better than the ones left out. I know of the ones you talk about but most young people who need them the most, don’t know them.
what happened to us reyale?
i however learnt we looked at elders as the those older, greyed maybe but forgot maturity of the brain. the media has done much in lime lighting the irrelevant ones and forgot those behind the cameras and curtains
I know… why would all these fake politicians get all this media mileage and the men and women impacting societies, no thing?
because the media has forgotten the basics. uits like an HR defending the employer instead of the employees
hehe I like the example you have given… everyone for himself for God all of us.
but again society has a role to play. the things society consider important /news worthy these days is overwhelming
Reason I gave up on watching TV and listening to certain radios, I choice what I want to listen to.
good idea. when i made the decision my friends thought i was high because i love tv. but i decided to pay attention to somethings and leave the rest to those who think that way
And you kinda found a better version of you when you did that, right?
a much better one and more sane