I'm looking at you, young person

Yesterday, when I was young

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Once upon a time I was young

…and I didn’t know anything. I thought I knew everything, (a regular part of being young) I didn’t, but I did know one thing. That was to listen. Once again this is perhaps as symptom of being born when I was. Seen but not heard was a regular maxim in my home and at school. Upon reaching my teen years I learned from listening, but this time it was from bands like  The Who “Hope I die before I get old” and “Don’t get fooled again.” This was the start of my “problems with authority”

Oddly I am left with an interesting point of view. I am a good, but skeptical listener. It has taught me to listen to what anyone has to say, evaluate it and the decide if the knowledge is useful, no matter what the source.

Which (finally) brings me to the point of this post.

The young have a great deal to learn from those with more experience. I know that I have learned so much from people older than myself. But I find that in the kink world often the older kinksters can be exclude by events like “The Under 35 Munch” It has been something I have heard time and time again from my peers. “I stopped going to that munch, it was full of the young and beautiful and I felt shunned” and that is a damn shame. I know people of a younger generation often feel that we can’t relate to their situation because the world is so very different now than it was in the past, and in some circumstance they are right, but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to offer the new kinksters of today. Often we have been through the very circumstances and issues that they are going through now. Hell even if you only look at the fact that someone may have been rigging/flogging/whipping/anything for decades might indicate they have information worth sharing.

Now, to you my peers, yes I am looking at you! Don’t you dare think that simply because you have been spanking bottoms for four score and seven years that you can’t learn something from the young. I have learned some amazing things from people that are half my age. Some these people have spent thousands of hours honing their skills while you have been stuck in a rut. Watch them, listen to them, talk to them and most importantly treat them as peers. If you look down on someone merely because of their age, or worse dismiss them with a “This is just how it has always been done” then you deserve to be left behind as a relic.

A persons age does not define their value, whether they are “wet behind the ears” or “long in the tooth”

Many people come to me for kink advice or suggestions. They see my age and make assumptions about my experience and often they are surprised that they have been in the kink lifestyle longer than I have. Wisdom isn’t the default that comes with age, I know many older people who have no clue at all, and being young does not preclude you from being wise. So lets remember we all have something valuable to share and that is what community is for sharing what we have learned.

 

Michael (the old guy in this parable)


Comments

9 responses to “Yesterday, when I was young”

  1. Half TrueRhyme Avatar
    Half TrueRhyme

    So true. And great pic (as always).

    1. It helps being married to a fabulous photographer, she is getting tired of hearing “My Love, I need a picture.” though 😛

  2. The combination of being older AND inexperienced can also leave you feeling slightly ridiculous and a bit out of place too!

    1. A trait we share, I console myself with the fact that I am a very quick study 😉

  3. Very well put!

    Velvet x

    1. Thank you very much 🙂

  4. Curvaceous Dee Avatar
    Curvaceous Dee

    There is a TNG (The Next Generation, i.e. under-35s) munch in my city – but it is one of six various munches that run. I never attended when I was in that age bracket because I had partners who were above it. It’s nice to see that most of the attendees to the TNG munch also come along to the ‘main’ munch each month too – so they’re not entirely insulated 🙂

    xx Dee

    1. The same applies here, but I often see segregated events by either age or “hotness” and it concerns me… but I am an old fuddy duddy..

  5. Last year we decided to go along to a local demo and decided to meet people in a local pub beforehand. All went quite well, we were the older outsiders because we don’t attend the local under 35 munch (although we have since discovered there is actually no age limit they just keep the title to give it a ‘young vibe’). Whilst chatting to one of the attendees they said they don’t like attending events with people over that age because “they tell us what we should do and I want to make my own mistakes”. Now I understand wanting to make your own discoveries but to actually turn down and ignore the advice of others?!

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