The Old and the Envious

“Shakespeare told it 400 years ago, ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together’.”(Needham) It is obvious that even from Shakespeare’s time that the elderly and the young have been at odds. What is the one reason that they cannot get along? One major reason is that the elderly have grown to hate the young. This feeling, at times, is mutual but more evident in the elderly. Because the elderly have passed the time in …showed first 75 words of 1334 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1334 total…better than the young. It is this need for superiority that causes the envious nature of the relationship between the young and the old to spiral out of control. It has once been said "Envy is pain at the sight of superior excellence in another, and is always a mark of blinding selfishness…” and it is this blinding selfishness that is what makes the end of the lives of the elderly so bitter and unpleasant.