With great excitement, we welcomed the newest member of our family to a scheduled photo shoot to capture for posterity four generations in a single photo. I know this can be digitally manipulated now, but we know we were all together in that same space and time. When we walked in, the photographer took control, picked up the baby and placed our grandchild on my dad’s lap. His face immediately lit up in a way I hadn’t seen in years. His voice lifted and lilted in that playful way we choose when communicating with babies. It was fun to witness this moment of familial pride and pleasure.
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Afterwards, we talked about the passage of time as marked by events such as this, and just how fast it all seems to be playing out. I know there are plenty of physiologic and psychologic explanations out there for why time seems to be moving faster. But it’s not just about time seeming to move so fast that we can’t catch up or the feeling that it’s speeding past us. Away from these family events, I’ve had conversations with my dad during which he acknowledges that “this world’s passed me by”, or “I’m not hep to all this new stuff”. He has a smart TV, a big one, and doesn’t understand why it keeps trying to make a connection to the internet that isn’t there. “Don’t they know I don’t have internet?”, he mumbles to anyone who will listen. As if there is one rep assigned to his account, someone whom he can call, who should know everything. You know, ‘the way it used to be’. As I contemplate some changes of my own, this got me to thinking about this sense or awareness of things “passing us by”. Things like the acceptance, mastery and usefulness of new ideas, new technologies, new discoveries. Researchers have proposed that our creative capabilities can be negatively impacted by cognitive decline that comes with aging, or the hardening of experience that comes with age. Maybe it’s just simply a matter of being set in our ways, comfortable and, as a result we have weakened incentives to learn new ideas. Or, it could be that as we get older, we also have more vested interests in intellectual, social, and financial matters and want to hold onto them which may render us less receptive to new ideas. Maybe, with so much life experience, we’re just more jaded about what really works and why, and what doesn’t and never has. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to accept that this is occurring and will continue to do so because I’m getting old (to which my dad whispers “there’s no ‘getting’ about it – you are old”), or that things are just so complex or built on technologies that I don’t or can’t understand. I don’t want to accept that I am potential road kill on this highway of progress that stops for no one. I’d prefer to think that I can make conscious choices about what I continue to learn and to accept those things I’ll let “pass me by”, as if I still have some control of these developments. Hopefully, that’s not just an excuse. For example, I am very comfortable with my decision to remain completely ignorant about cryptocurrencies. I am not even the least bit curious. I’ll let that one pass me by. There are other things I know that I have to make an effort to stay up on, such as electric vehicles, the battery technology and production that enables them, and the applications and reach of Artificial Intelligence. Those things will shape the future. All in all, I am extremely grateful that I still have the ability to contemplate these things and the freedom to make these choices. Reflecting on the photo shoot and our beloved grandchild, I’m reminded of the lyrics to a song made famous by Louis Armstrong: I hear babies cry I watch them grow They'll learn much more Than I'll ever know And I think to myself What a wonderful world Yes, it certainly is. |