WCMessenger.com: Variety is the spice of life

There is something sacred about a village full of people of all ages, pulling together and using individual skills and abilities to live well. A mix of ages and I.Q. makes life interesting, challenging, a learning event.

When schools were one room educational projects a hundred or so years ago, students were exposed to multiple learning levels, mentors and daily quotidian titillation.

It is when society dictated that the masses be classified and placed into groups that society began to deteriorate. Human frailty brings out the excellence in others and our faith in another human being compensates for liabilities, bringing up the average of what we all might be.

If you have ever watched birds, you know that something powerful goes on in this species. This morning I saw a bird perched near another on the street. One of them for some reason couldn't fly. The other walked around him and at times stood very close to him. A car approached but neither moved. Finally the frail bird in a gust flew away and the other with him.

When large numbers of people the same age or with the same needs are placed together, the milieu is grinding, boring, debilitating ennui. Individuals begin to feed off the weaknesses and negativity and incendiary habits of the others, and individuality and creativity wanes. Spirits are rendered effete.

Age old wisdom says variety is the spice of life. We all know of examples of a small child cared for by an elderly family member or friend developing into an almost angelic arrangement. The nurturing that both of them experience is priceless. And the secondary results are reverence for age, for wisdom, for vulnerability.

Mentally challenged children and the elderly with dementia thrive on the one on one stimulation and care of individuals with sharp minds. The caregivers, themselves, admit that the evolvement of spirit during such episodes is like no other experience. Even arrangements with a home health agent trumps the battlegrounds of group care.

Chain gangs in the most negative of all environments fared better and offered more reform with a challenge of scenery, versus rot and riots that culminate from incarcerating people with like minds in small spaces.

We, as a culture, create and operate institutions out of necessity, and at a pyrrhic cost. Too few people are willing to sacrifice for the well-being of their children, their parents, those in need of special care. We are paying the ultimate cost already, that of moral corruption and meaningless existence.

What is the purpose of forming choirs, classes, clubs, fraternities and even homes with people of the same age and frailty, when the young, the very old, the middle-aged, the well and the ill, the demented and the intellectual, have so much to offer each other?

Trish New
Decatur