World Senior Citizens Day – Dera Sacha Sauda’s Commitment to their Well-being

Every year August 21 is celebrated as the World Senior Citizens Day to highlight the role they play in the society, honouring their contributions and the crucial needy to safeguard their well-being and rights. Let’s have a look at how we can make this world a better place for those in their golden years.

The Guiding Stars of Families and Society – Senior Citizens

Senior citizens are the backbone of families as well as the societies. Their experience, lifetime of wisdom, profound insights, judgments and ability to discern act to serve as the north star for the families. In fact, they act as the strong roots which hold the entire family firmly to the ground, preventing them from getting astray due to any negative circumstances.

Therefore, in an ideal scenario the family environment, working state of the society and infrastructure should be conducive to the wellbeing of the senior citizens allowing them to productively contribute to the society, protect their rights, and ensuring that they thrive and enjoy their golden years.

A Brief Look at the Data

As per the 2022 consensus, India has 10.5% population of senior citizens aged 60 and above, constituting almost 149 million individuals. By 2050 these numbers are expected to double at 20.8%, such that one in every 5 persons will be a senior citizen.

How Seniors bind the Multigenerational Joint Families

India, being a land of rich culture and tradition, predominantly had joint families where every member from great grandparents, grandparents to the grandchildren would live together.  The seniors were respected, loved and taken care of, their advice and guidance served as the roadmap for the entire family. In fact, whole identities if families would revolve around their seniormost person.

The elderlies would hold the whole families together, sort out any discrepancies and maintain harmony within the giant families.

Offering love to the younger generation, their bonding with the grandchildren offered a learning curve to both, the youngest and the oldest. As they shared their life stories and wisdom with the young, they would also learn from them. As a result, seniors from joint families seldom suffered from memory impairment or dementia and would live long and active lives.

The result was evident in terms of enhanced family happiness, positive environment, family members would feel loved and blessed, and depression or loneliness almost never cropped up.

With their lifetime of experiences, seniors acted as mentors, leveraging their wisdom to help young generation achieve success.

  

Harsh Realities of Today

When a child is born, the parents feel a profound sense of responsibility along with overflowing love for the child. Trying to provide the best nurturing and upbringing for their children, they devote their entire lives towards building their children’s lives. From food, clothing and education, they do it all, guiding the child to the best of their abilities.

Unfortunately, the same children after growing up, find taking care of their elderly to be burdensome in this profound era of Kalyuga. They stop hearing them, isolate and abandon them, and often leave them at the old age homes, where the senior citizens are helplessly forced to spend the rest of their lives away from their children and grandchildren.

One of the primary reasons of such irresponsible act is lack of moral values.

So, can the loving culture be revived? Is there still hope?

Yes.

Reviving the Culture: Saint Dr. MSG’s initiatives for the Senior Citizens

The hearts of true saints are filled with love for the entire mankind. Central to the concept of humanity is selfless love, and the most revered Spiritual Master Saint Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan’s initiatives aim to bring back this selfless love.

Understanding the plight and suffering of the senior citizens, revered Guru ji commenced multiple initiatives for their well-being, ensuring that the golden years of the seniors are filled with joy and love. Following Guruji’s guidance, not only have the lives of senior citizens improved, but it has also helped the young generation learn from their timeless wisdom, get their blessings and has given a profound sense of belonging.

SUPREME OBLIGATION

Parents dedicate their entire lives to build the lives of their children and make supreme sacrifices in doing so. Saint Dr. MSG teaches to avoid parental disdain and treat the parents with love, honour and respect, supporting them throughout their old age.

PROVIDING ORPHANAGES

Often, many old-aged parents are neglected, abandoned and are left wandering on the roads. Considering their plight, Guru ji commenced the initiative to build orphanages for such abandoned senior citizens, where they would be taken care of.

CARE & Related initiatives

Many senior citizens are abandoned and have to live an isolating life at old age homes, away from their families. Saint Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan encourages the volunteers to visit old age homes with their families, spend time with the seniors, bring them joy and ensure that their needs are met, as much as possible. It must be ensured that the male members and boys interact with senior men while women and girls interact with senior women. A little effort from our side can bring light to their lives and blessings to our souls.

Adopting the isolated Senior Citizens

Unfortunately, there are senior couples whose children either don’t live near them or have been deceased. There are also widowed seniors living alone. Saint Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan encourages to adopt them by employing a dedicated devotee caretaker who would help with daily chores. Guru ji also recommends occasionally visiting them, checking upon their well-being and providing them companionship.

Supporting initiatives that strengthen the bond between elders and young people

While it is important to take care of the seniors, it is equally important that the young people know their culture and understand their responsibilities. These initiatives tend to strengthen the bond between elderlies and the young, revive the loving culture, so that families live together without disdain and seniors are respected within the families.

BLESS

Touching the feet of elderlies and seeking their blessings is an innate part of Indian culture. When the feet of the elderlies are touched, their hearts transmit immense blessings, and as their hand touches the head of the child, positive rays and blessings are transferred to them. It not only improves the bonding between the seniors and young generation, but also brings positivity. Hence, under the BLESS initiative, young generation is guided to touch and seek the blessings of their seniors every morning.

TEAM

This initiative encourages entire families to have their meals together, at least once a week, or daily, if possible. Providing an opportunity for the young and senior generation to interact with each other, it provides a platform for sharing laughters, ideas, concerns or simply daily happenings.

UTTAM SANSKAAR

To instil moral values and ethics, Saint Dr. MSG, via the initiative ‘Uttam Sanskaar’, urges parents to teach values of humanity, kindness, compassion and empathy in their children few days per week. This will imbue the core cultural values in children since their childhood, so that as grownups, they behave responsibly towards their elders.

68 million Dera Sacha Sauda volunteers are committed to improve the lives of seniors through the above initiatives. These profound works have already brought tremendous positive changes in the society and aim to foster a culture of harmony and respect.

Senior citizens’ potential, wisdom and experiences are precious and valuable for the overall sustainable growth of the society and nation. Their contributions can help charter a roadmap for a better future. We can learn from their knowledge as well as mistakes of the past, innovate and provide solutions based on their inputs.

Let us take care of these treasure troves of wisdom, as guided by Saint Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan. Their blessings can change our worlds, mutual love can provide longevity to both the generations and every member of the family can experience enhanced happiness through this multigenerational bonding and love. Together, let’s foster an environment where every senior citizen is taken care of, loved and supported, and we all thrive while seeking blessings of our elderlies.