ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Available for over a year

The news over the weekend that every worker aged 18 or over will begin saving into a workplace pension unless they opt out, has been credited with encouraging more people to save for old age. Over the years the growth in our life expectancy means that one in three babies born today may live to over 100. This increased longevity is quite a testament to how far we’ve come in medical technology, improved health care and better living conditions. But the two drivers of our changing demographics, people having fewer children and living longer, also have a profound impact on where we now see ourselves. Living in a society where younger people are in a majority poses a different set of challenges to one where most of the population falls in older age groups. We have these conversations usually in relation to health and social care, employment and pensions. There’s a price to everything because our lives are measured in terms of productivity, how much we each cost. Because we see ageing largely as a resource issue, the question often asked is how to ensure that older people will be skilled and healthy so as to contribute fully to society. But important as this question is, we need a shift in consciousness about ageing as a whole. Older people are not a homogenous group nor should the changing demographic be seen in negative terms often described as a tsunami or a ticking time bomb on our resources. Each generation brings value to our lives so how do we create a society where we put older people into the heart of our communities and not on its peripheries, into the very centre of our family lives rather than people other people need to care for? I often wonder what my life would be like today if my parents had not passed away at a relatively young age. How their lives would have continued to impact on mine. The Qur’anic command to always honour your parents, doesn’t deny the emotional and physical challenges of this relationship, but that my children have grown up without knowing their grandparents, has often made me sad. In some ways, their absence has always meant a part of me is missing. A week today is Christmas day and one of the essential messages of Christmas is that it’s about family. It’s one of the abiding memories I have as a child even though we didn’t celebrate Christmas, the holiday season meant family spending time together for a few days. Beyond the food and gifts, our task is to show that we care, even compromise our own desires so that others feel loved with a sense of belonging and purpose. In other words, valuing others is the biggest gift we can give to them.