A happy coincidence

I rewatched an old Ted Talk that made a great impression on me when they first started publishing. I couldn’t believe this one was from February 2006, just one month shy of 20 years ago. Sadly, Ken Robinson, passed away on 2020. I’ve resolved to watch it at least once a year and I hope you will too. It’s one of the funniest and most poignant Ted Talks. Rewatching it today gave rise to a wonderful coincidence.

My wife had mentioned that today is Epiphany, so I was butchering the Frankincense joke that Ken recalls in the video when talking about his son’s big role as Joseph in the school nativity play. Later on in the talk he says, “I had an epiphany”. Out of 170,000+ words in the language and 365 days in a year, I choose to smile, tilt my head to the side and welcome this wonderful coincidence.

The fundamental question of the talk is, “How do we prepare people for a future that we cannot predict?”

The talk feels even more relevant now. A year after he gave it, the iPhone would be released and drastically change how we communicate; Children born on the day of this talk will be in work or graduting university in the next year and will enter a workforce desparately trying to figure out how their jobs will change over the next 2 or 3 years.

Yes, I’ll watch this every year and set a reminder to do so on Jan 6.