It's Sunday evening and now that we've got the kids to bed, I'm sitting and thinking about the future. The future that my daughters will grow up in. The longer this virus event persists, the more it will change how we all move forward, and I can see it happening already.
The girls and my wife, a teacher, have been home for about 10 days now. I can see the stress of confinement creeping up on them. We live out in the sticks, so the kids have been able to get outside a bit but we've had a lot of cold rainy days with more to come. To help with the isolation, my oldest daughter, who's 7, had a virtual play-date with one of her buddies from school. They had lunch and watched shows over FaceTime for an hour and a half.
My first reaction to seeing that was a flash to the future and her being 15, wanting nothing to do with me and being on her phone, tablet or whatever new technology is out by then. As scary of a thought that is, it really is so cool that she can be having a real experience and they can enjoy being together at a time when they have to be apart. It made me think about how different this would have been when I was a kid. I would have been stuck inside as my brother and I bruised each other repeatedly and my mom, an infection control nurse, would have been even more militant about our hand washing.
I think it's going to be interesting how governments, companies, individuals and schools innovate through this. How will companies utilize technology to increase efficiency? Will manufacturers build redundancy to avoid single supplier risks? How about schools, will this change how education is delivered, especially at the collegiate levels?
I look at every single experience as an opportunity to learn and better ourselves. I hope that through all this we can innovate to create better ways to protect ourselves, our culture and our economy. It might seem daunting but it's a wonderful opportunity to seize.
-Tim Golas, Partner @ Spurstone - Architects of Executive Wealth