Why We Can’t Afford To Get Stuck In The Past

Recently, my wife and I were grocery shopping while I was singing a certain song that I couldn’t get out of my head. I saw this elderly lady and instantly thought, I bet she doesn’t know this song. Maybe I was wrong; she might be a hip granny, but you know you would have thought the same thing.

This got me to thinking about how people older than myself tend to listen to music from their generation. I’m not saying this as if it’s a bad thing; it’s merely an observation. It is what it is. As we get older, we seek the comfort of our younger days. We reminisce and use our memories as a way of separating ourselves from our younger counterparts. Hey, remember that one show? No? Oh yeah, that’s right; you’re too young!

Regardless of age, we all want to talk about the good ole days. You know, the days we lived in before these crazy times. The days of our youth were always such simpler days. It seems that every day that the world lives, it just gets so much more complicated!

My grandmother has a serious problem with technology. I remember being a kid and my mother and me having to drive out to my grandmother’s to fix her VCR. My mom never did fix the VCR. She always did something simple like put the TV on the right channel or turn the VCR on. You know, troubleshooting. Now my grandmother owns a DVD player. And yes, my mother still makes occasional trips to fix it.

I think the world scares my dad. He says today’s music sucks and he clings to Creedence Clearwater Revival and Pink Floyd. And the Internet? I’m not sure he could check his email if he had an account.

Now, I’d be a hypocrite if I sat here and picked on the older generations and pointed out how they’ve failed to change with the times. The truth is, I catch myself doing some of the same things. Only a little different. Lately, I’ve noticed that I listen to the same music I listened to in high school and college. I’m not finding many new artists to put into my collection. And technology? I can’t guarantee that I can tell you what’s cool from one day to the next. I’m not the most “in the know” person out there.

It would appear that I’m not the only one though. Many of us sit around and laugh at the marketers who are relying on ads in the Yellow Pages to cause their businesses to explode. When we get a call from a telemarketer, we are in disbelief that people still try that outdated method of promotion.

Guess what — if we’re not careful, this will be us. And we can’t afford to let that happen.

Change is inevitable. Whether you like it or not, the world you live in is going to change. Rather than cling to the comforts of our younger days, we need to embrace change and adapt. Because I can promise you that as I’m typing this post or as you’re reading it, change is happening out there somewhere. And it’s going to affect you somehow.

Change happened in the times of our parents and grandparents, but it seems that change is happening at a more rapid pace in our lifetime. We can thank the explosion of the Internet for this. Resources that were once reserved for big businesses are now in the hands of everyday people. And some of those people are pretty damn creative. They’re changing the world and the business environment. The comforts we enjoy today will not be there tomorrow. Something new and different will have taken their places.

This is the mindset I want to maintain because nostalgia will get us nowhere.

I don’t want to be that guy in his 40′s popping his collar and talking about the days before MP3 killed the CD. We can look around and see examples of older generations struggling in today’s environment. What makes you think you can afford to get stuck in the past?

Tagged as: change, nostalgia, technology