previously published in Coastal Illustrated/The Brunswick News October 19, 2011
They say when a visionary dies, a great light dims and a certain unexplainable but undeniable feeling of loss can be felt by everyone, far and wide. This is how it felt on October 5, 2011, the day Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, died at his home of a rare form of pancreatic cancer at the young age of 56. The vast majority of us never met him or saw him in person. Not everyone owns one of the products he created. But somehow we all know, without a doubt, someone great, someone special, someone extraordinary left us all too soon and it might be quite a while, if it even occurs during our lifetime, before we will see someone like him again.
In May of 1993, Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal, quite prophetically, that "being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me...going to bed at night saying we have done something wonderful...that's what matters to me."
Eighteen years later, Jobs died a billionaire several times over. Whether that mattered or not, no one can argue that he single-handedly changed how we all look and interact with the world. He did to something wonderful. More specifically, he left a legacy of individualism and invention that few can or will be able to emulate. He isn't gone forever. We can and will always be inspired by both his work and his words. One of his most touching and inspiring speeches was directed at the Standford University Class of 2005 after he was diagnosed and being treated for cancer.
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know it when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keeping looking until you find it."
"Remembering I will be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything --all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart...Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
Finally, he went on to say "you cannot connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust the dots will somehow connect your future. You have to trust something-your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down and has made all the difference in my life."
I have been thinking about that a lot lately these past few weeks; the part about having to trust in something. Here is someone who didn't take the time to question his fate, he just lived it.
There was another such man here on the island, a doctor, right here in our community that died a few days before Jobs. He was a true individual also, as anyone who ever met Dr. Charlton Futch would tell you. Chuck, as his friends called him, possessed a wicked sense of humor, the warmest of smiles, and a ready embrace. He and his wife, Anne, raised three amazing and conscientious boys who went on to become wonderful fathers in their own right. Dr. Futch would tell you this was his single greatest contribution. And he did tell us in his own words on the back of his Celebration of Life booklet that was passed out to all of us at his service. It read as a handwritten note from Chuck: "A husband and father first, then a physician."
I was reminded of a poem by e.e. cummings, as I sat in Christ Church that day:
i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far away from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains
i am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
"Poem 77" from 95 Poems (1958)
At his grave site, where his family stood surrounding his final resting place, a warm, powerful rush of wind circled all of us...it was like one of his hugs. The tree branches shook; the Spanish moss danced; and for few brief moments you felt his presence and with it brought a feeling of peace and comfort that we were just lucky to have known him and to be part of this family of which he was so proud.
It seems almost serendipitous, I guess, the lowercase "i" in all of this. Job's "i" before one of his inventions may very well represent the individual who is using it. Our poet, e.e. cummings, might have told you the "i" allows the individual reading the poem to become the narrator, not the poet himself. And it wasn't just the unconventional use of lowercase letters that made him stand out as an original. Cummings routinely would scatter words unevenly across a page and make up whole new words and phrases like "mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful." Like Jobs, he was one of a kind.
So was Dr. Futch.
And so are we all. I believe that is the greatest gift God had given us.
I know, I know. We all can't be Steve Jobs. A person like him comes about once in a lifetime. But he also reminds us in his own words that "your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
It's up to each one of us to find our special talent, hone it, believe in it, and never second guess it. That is where the magic happens, the "something wonderful," and makes the world we live in a better place.
iGrieve though
i am grateful.
