Last Monday I flew home from a family visit to Philadelphia.  As a recovering TVholic, defined by not having lived with a television for several decades because I’d lose my job (or, now, my new wife) over an inability to wrest my eyes from the likes of Gilligan’s Island, the first thing I do upon boarding a long haul is check out the movie catalogue.

US Airways has two film libraries:  new releases and classics.  I opted for classics.  I had a strange craving for a western, an old classic like Red River, or maybe something newer like Unforgiven.  For months now I’ve also had a hankering for The Misfits, but didn’t hold out much hope of finding that gem.  Even after deliberately adjusting my expectations downward (it’s not like I was hoping to find Fellini on a bargain flight out of Philly), the selection caught me by surprise.  Here’s one of the films:  Night at the Museum:  Battle of the Smithsonian.   Seems I needed to adjust my understanding of classic.  Honestly, I could feel the very tectonic plates of beauty, reason and truth grind and crack at the idea of a Ben Stiller sequel nudging up next to Casablanca, The Big Lebowski, or even Rocky (the first one).

That earthquake came directly on the heels of a wonderful party hosted by my parents, to celebrate my recent marriage.  There, two generations of guests came repeatedly and without collusion to the same exact conclusion – I got extremely lucky and my wife must have a hidden impairment.

Anyway, as we milled around the garden on a sunny afternoon, I couldn’t help noticing the deep gray of my folks’ octogenarian crowd seemed to have gone viral among my gang of college buddies.   The moment struck me as deeply, starkly revelatory.  There they were, a mirror of life’s next stage and hence a window on the delusions of the present.  In vernacular:  a reality check.  When was the last time you saw an aid worker who doddered?

Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ flashed to mind.  That is an understatement when my own understanding of what is classic turns out to be about three decades and a whole lot of classicalness out of touch with reality.  It raises the question of whether or not we recognize the changing of the guard.  Whether there are signals in place to let us know that the world has shifted, gone in a different direction or left us in the dust.  Maybe we are hardwired to be the last to know.  Of course, the guard isn’t changing at all.  We’re changing.  And at the same time we’re the guard, standing still, left behind by an evolving world.

For humanitarians, I can only say this.  One of the other classic movies on offer?  Rise of the Planet of the Apes, starring James Franco.  Does anybody even remember the pathos etched on Charlton Heston’s face as he rode up the beach, only to find the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand?  Or to paraphrase digital humanitarianism guru Paul Conneally:  How long before we know if we’ve become an analogue organization in a digital world?