Ashley+I’s+Final+AmEx+2015+Speech


 * Ageism **

I am afraid of “old people.” Well, at least I used to be. You see, growing up I was always surrounded by elderly people at convalescent homes or nursing homes because my mom was a nurse. When I was younger, I used to always fear starting a conversation with one of them because I saw them as worn-out, grumpy senior citizens who’ve been casted aside by society and forced to hide in depressing dens. Now, remember I was only around the age of 7 at the time, so I didn’t know much about being understanding and feeling empathy, or respect for that matter. Now that I’m older, I’ve obviously grown out of that and have realized that convalescent homes are much more complicated than that. Senior citizens have to constantly face the stereotype that they are fragile, smelly, and unknowledgable about the modern culture. Many of them are sometimes forgotten by their family members and are left in the care of nurses.

This type of stereotyping is known as ageism, discriminating based on age, and it doesn’t just happen to older adults, it happens to children, teens, and young adults. Children are seen as the innocent and ignorant, teens are the young and reckless and young adults should be the ones who are on their way to achieving success, if they haven’t already. Even today, we joke around about freshman being annoying and incapable of responsibility. We like to judge before we even consider their personality and values.

In the America that I want to live in, I want to see more people embracing all ages having the potential to do something great. I want to see more of the younger generation not being afraid to start a conversation with the older generation and vice versa because I believe communicating outside of your normal range of age can lead to sharing a variety of experiences and learning from them. There are teens who think they’ve got their whole life plan figured out and there are middle-aged adults still trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. After all, we are all just human beings just trying to get by.

[|__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO1jlbTFhdk__]
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