Decaying Age

One of the signs of ageing not mentioned in the cosmetics adverts is to sense that everything's going downhill. A man wrote, "We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit pubs and have no self control."

This was not written in a paper today but is from an inscription on a 6000-year-old Egyptian tomb.

I've found that I also tend to become an angry, grumpy old man when faced with the new; or so my children warn me. I harrumph at music, fashion, exam results, changing standards. The decline seems so real. Perhaps every generation, as it gets older, suspects that the world's going to pot and it makes us so angry! Grumpy old men and women swap stories that reinforce their sense of 'the world's decline' and we feel the impotence and fear of not being able to do anything about it.

We've had some truly sad stories about young people in the press recently. How tragic; to read of such violence sometimes fuelled by drunkenness or a desperate need to belong. It's easy to feel that this is a new reality, but in the main it isn't. Reality is far more complex. If young people have in fact been getting worse since 6000 BC then we would be in an even worse state than we are!

The truth is that so much of the new is filled with creativity, hope and life, and the young people of our nation are by and large hard working, moral, caring, creative and extraordinary human beings; a real credit to their ever more elderly parents and grandparents.

Lord God, creator of all things new, help me to see the world more as you see it; to rejoice in the good, and to think upon whatsoever is lovely and of good report. Amen.

Mark Wakelin Radio 4