Apparently, a Yale professor recently suggested that old people in Japan should just kill themselves (sic) to reduce the burden on their aging society.
I read and processed this information against the backdrop of thinking about my parents, in-laws and other elders in my vicinity I deeply respect. The more I think about it, the more I am at a loss of words for what we have become.
Of course, his statement has attracted a lot of backlash and there are some who applaud his view while criticizing others of being overly emotional/impractical, I wonder:
- at what point our relationships with the elders became so transactional?
- at what point did we start to focus so much on a country’s economy that nothing else seems to matter?
- at what point did we become so thankless and selfish to completely forget/disregard/demean the very source of our existence?