Measuring Life

I hate when older people will speak to you like you know nothing. Like their plethora of knowledge highly exceeds your own when in reality they don't know just how much that person they are speaking down to has went through through out the trials of their life. Personally I know people my age that people don't really take seriously that they really should. I don't want to put anyone else's personal life out there but I'll use my self as an example. People think I don't know what its like to lose someone because no one very close to me has died quite yet. I understand that yes it is something traumatic and hard to go through but personally I think I have been through worse. I'm not saying it is as sad or should be pitied but I'm just saying that it is if not more, just as emotionally scarring to have a parent completely abandon you. Their argument is that I can still look that parent up and find him but honestly, at least the person you lost didn't chose to go, they didn't abandon you simply because they didn't want you. If my father died, I wouldn't even know that he had passed so he is as out of my life, as someone who had died would be. 
Then there is this false thought process that plays out years instead of experiences. You could be a million but have experienced little to no change and never had to cope with much in life compared to a teenager who's parent walked out on them,who's parent had a significant other that abused them and that teenager, as a child, feared for their life. The teenager could have been neglected and forced to care for their younger siblings, or they could have no parents at all and had to bare life always going from foster home to foster home until someone finally adopted them. 

What I'm trying to say is that older people need to stop assuming that they have been through more or are more intelligent then someone younger than them. Life isn't measured in years it is measured in your experiences and overall the contents of your life!