It may seem as-though many elderly people forget manners, and just as many more don’t forget them but deliberately don’t use them anymore, but is this true? In an age when society spends a great deal of time chastising the young about being rude and remembering the so called, good old days when people were polite, could it be that good manners fade as people grow old?

By the time some people become elderly they assume they have a right to at last be themselves. They have no one to impress anymore, and so standards slip. Breaking wind and burping indiscriminately becomes almost a necessity as their bowels develop a mind of their own and the rest of their bodily functions rebel in unison. In short, it must be hard to be polite when you are housed in a rebellious body which doesn’t understand manners.

There are other kinds of manners though, which don’t depend upon the reliability of parts of the human anatomy. Saying please and thank-you costs nothing, as many parents will tell their children, and sending thank-you letters or returning a call is well worth the effort if you want to show good manners and be thoughtful. However, how you behave becomes different as you age as your own agenda alters with time.

Replying to invitations and requests becomes a physically and mentally difficult task as you struggle to recall words which have slipped from the end of your personal alphabet and your aged hands refuse to undergo the strain of holding a pen for more than a few moments at a time. You may also be afraid of carrying on any sort of dialogue with another person or of encouraging them to communicate as it would mean you are expected to continue to do so repeatedly as a relationship ensues.

There are of course, no real excuses for elderly people who are still mentally sound enough to remember morals to not be polite. Their rude behavior though, may sometimes be put down to medication or a disgruntled disillusionment of life which has left them feeling put out or left out of the modern world.

There again there are some elderly people who never ever forget their p’s and q’s. They are far more polite than younger generations and still look upon the youths of today with despair, considering them vulgar and obnoxious. At the other end of the scale are old people who have become grumpy and angry to boot.

Angry old people are dissatisfied and wary of others. They have been shifted about from home to home or ignored when the going was tough. Then someone new pops onto the scene and wonders why they aren’t grateful. It’s neither parties fault in such a case. The fault lays with a society which treats its elderly without respect or dignity.

Life is a journey, and as with all journeys the mood you’re in when you get close to its completion depends a great deal on experiences gained along the way. You may hark back to good experiences when you were at the start of your journey and feel dissatisfied when comparing them with the present. Or, you may live in gratitude for your blessings, live each day as it comes and still feel hopeful enough for the future to bother to use good manners.