My grandfather was a great person. 

I know, most people say good things about their ancestors. But my father’s father was a special man. He had an angelic sense about him, always treating others kindly. He navigated life with a dignity and grace that seems lost in today’s world… but that’s a topic for another time.

He lived to the ripe old age of 100 years and 11 months. On his 100th birthday, he was alert as ever and greeted a century’s worth of well-wishers with a beaming smile. When he was in his 90s, he was still driving himself and served as a volunteer for Meals On Wheels. I jokingly asked him once how many of his meal deliveries were to people younger than him. “Nearly all of them!” he replied. I could go on and on about my admiration for this man.

I often think about a particular morning I spent with my grandfather a few years back. It especially resonates with me as we enter into another exponential leap forward in technological change.

When my grandfather was around 96 or 97, my dad and I went over to visit him one morning for breakfast. Still able and energetic, when we offered to make him breakfast, he kindly suggested that we have a seat so that he could prepare the food for us instead. After chuckling, my dad and I sat down and started chit-chatting. 

My dad, a music fanatic his entire life, was carrying around a brand new Jawbone bluetooth speaker. This was around the time when bluetooth speakers first hit the market, and my dad was obsessed with his new futuristic wireless sound machine. 

I knew my grandfather was a classical music fan and decided to set up a demo for him. I asked him to watch me while I queued up a Beethoven track on my dad’s iPhone and then walked across the kitchen to place the Jawbone speaker on the other side of the room. He stood there and watched me carefully, as I playfully showed him that there were obviously no cords connecting the two devices. I put the iPhone in his hand and told him to press play. He did.

Beethoven filled the room, pouring out from the Jawbone speaker. My grandfather jolted upright. His eyes moved back and forth from the Jawbone to the iPhone. He smiled broadly and handed it back to me, turning to finish preparing breakfast.

A few minutes later, we all sat and enjoyed his tasty breakfast to a soundtrack of classical music. He watched intently as I flipped through a Beethoven playlist on the iPhone. I asked him, “You’ve been in the world almost 100 years. What do you think about all of this new technology?” He quickly replied, “I wish it had come around sooner.”

I sat and pondered his reply for a few minutes. “I wish it had come around sooner.” It stood out to me. Most elderly people I knew complained about technological advances. It was moving too fast, they said. It was making life too complicated. It was changing how people treated one another.

But that wasn’t his reaction at all. Quite the contrary. He loved all this new stuff. Here was a man that was born in 1913. At that time, horse and buggy were the predominant modes of daily transportation. Radio and phonograph were new. Everyone wrote letters to communicate. And now, almost 100 years later, he loves bluetooth and wants more.

He observed an amazing journey of technology advancement during his life, having witnessed the advent and commercialization of:

• Widespread radio
• Widespread electricity
• Automobiles
• Telephone – landline, cordless and mobile
• Television – black & white, and then color
• Air travel 
• The Internet
• Modems
• Wifi, and
• More electronic gadgets than I can name here.

And of course, bluetooth, introduced to him one fine morning by his son and grandson.

Interestingly, my grandfather lived nearly all of his life in Huntsville, Alabama – home of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center and Redstone Arsenal – a technology hub that served as a key laboratory for development of the rocket technology that took humans to space and the moon throughout the 1960s. He was the youngest city council member in the history of the city, which he helped electrify. Wernher Von  Braun lived across the street from him for several years, and they were coffee buddies for a time! Again, quite the man. And quite a life.

The morning after he died, I spoke to my uncle – his oldest son. I said, “You know I never heard him say a cross word about another human being.” My uncle replied, “He never did.” I believe that. 

Clearly, I learned a lot from him. And most of what I learned was more about ‘how to be’ versus ‘what to do’. As I get older, I try to emulate his calm demeanor and angelic ways. (Still working on that.) But that morning I learned something else about him that solidified it all. He was constantly curious, unafraid, and optimistic. He accepted the inevitable changes life brings. Instead of complaining about all of the new technologies that came throughout his life, he embraced them – all the way to the end. 

I hope to emulate that part of him as well, that open-mindedness, especially when faced with the tidal wave of changes happening all around us. The pace is dizzying, and naturally it makes us humans feel overwhelmed with so many changes happening at once.

But I’ve chosen to embrace it all with grace, just like my grandfather.