Keeping Current

As my wife often remarks, she isn’t worried about me running off with a younger woman.  A younger woman wouldn’t understand a word I said.  My musical, political, historical and humor references would precede her by a number of years, possibly even extend to before she was born.

Still, I do try to stay current, thanks to my grandchildren, ages 4 to 16.  Through their encouragement I now have passing familiarity with Pentatonix, Rihana, Taylor Swift, Shakira, Pink, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez.  (I already knew Lady Gaga because Tony Bennett introduced us to her through their duets on TV.)

I’ve seen the films Big Hero 6, Kung Fu Panda 3, Cinderella, Mirror Mirror, and Gnomeo and Juliet, among others.  I don’t always get the point,  but it doesn’t matter because I enjoy being with the grandkids so much. And I can also say “thank you” and “you’re welcome” in Cantonese.  I have the call to do so just about as often as I can find ways to work the above musicians and films into my repartee.

Now comes Fast Company to deal another reality blow to the remote possibility that I can keep up.  It’s one of the magazines I read in an attempt to stay current in our world of work, business, technologies and discontinuous change.  I just read that “Just nine months after investors placed a $10 billion valuation on WeWork, the office-rental company has raised another round of funding at a $16 billion valuation . . . [making] WeWork the sixth most valuable private company, eclipsing SpaceX and Pinterest.  On paper, WeWork is nearly as valuable as the largest publicly traded office real estate company, Boston Properties, which has a market cap of about $18 billion.”

Boston Properties is the only familiar name to me.  Pinterest I have encountered at some point.  WeWork and SpaceX?  What?  And on top of that, numbers in the multiple billions exceed my usually flexible imagination.

This is getting out of hand.  Or maybe it should be past tense.  This got out of hand some time ago.

I’ve decided to have a new tee shirt printed for myself.  On the chest it will say “No One Can Know It All.” On the back it will say “Including Me!”.   If I can’t hide it, I might as well go public with it.

Here’s my question to you: How are you trying to keep up? Or did you stop trying long ago?