Tag Archives: Steve Jobs

LIFE IS SHORT: What are you going to do about it?

“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 I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” –Steve Jobs

Hello friend,

Last weekend, my wife’s family had a reunion. From the pictures on Facebook, it looked like a fun and festive time for all. The next day at the hotel, check-out time came and went, but her cousin had not come out of his room. Finding no answer at the door, the hotel staff let themselves in. He was dead. Massive heart attack. He was only in his forties, a few years older than me.

Talk about a gut-punch. Even though I didn’t know him, all the photos I ever saw showed what looked like a healthy, vibrant man with a mega-watt smile that lit up the whole scene. He looked like a guy you wanted to get to know, wanted to be around. Good energy. And just like that, he is gone.

I know that death strikes a blow to each of us differently, obviously depending upon who the person was to us, but also playing a role are what age they were, how similar their circumstances were to our own, how they died, and the legacy they are leaving behind based on how they lived.

Clearly, when a person we know and love dies, there is an intensely personal process of grieving to work through, a process that pervades every aspect of our lives during that period and colors our lenses a different way.

Something quite distinct happens—at least to me—when someone I do not know well dies.   I go inside myself for a while. I feel hurt by it. Deeply hurt. Not necessarily because of that individual and the pain their loved ones are feeling—though I certainly sympathize, we are talking here about people I am not so personally involved with—but hurt from a different source.

I guess you could say that death causes me to feel hurt by the Universe. It’s a philosophical thing, I suppose. I am pained—tortured, even—by the unfairness of life on Earth and how, in the tiny moment a gun is shot or an artery closed, a beautiful life comes to an abrupt end. As deeply as I have probed the spiritual realm and as prepared as I have many times felt to be taken to the next realm, I somehow still come back to this place where the brevity of life–and the nonguaranteed nature of the next moment—just don’t sit right with me. It feels unfair. And anyone who knows me well knows that unfairness burns me to my core.

But that is life. Short, uncertain, and unfair.

Yes, it is amazing, precious, and littered with beauty everywhere you look, too. I know, and I see it that way, believe me. But in certain moments, like when a smiley young man dies of a massive heart attack in his hotel room, the short, uncertain, and unfair side sure delivers a blow to my psyche.

After I go through my process of feeling sad about that person’s loved ones and the life left behind, inevitably I drift into this patch of days where that death—and “Death” itself, the concept, with a capital D—begins to play on the strings of my soul. The reality of how quickly my own life is passing, not to mention the very real possibility that it could end at any moment for countless reasons beyond my control, gets into my core and really stirs things up.

The bigger questions of my existence here become front-and-center issues in my consciousness. How well am I using your time? What positive impact am I making on my world? Am I using my gifts? Am I allowing my soul to emerge, or is my ego keeping it at bay? Am I living the life I want to live, or the life my parents or society think I should live? Am I making the most of every day? Am I in this moment, or am I stuck in the past or future? Am I sucking the marrow out of life or just drifting by? Am I making a LIFE or just a living? Am I being brave enough? Loving enough? Optimistic enough? Empathetic enough? Forgiving enough? Kind enough? At the end of my days, when my life flashes before my eyes, will it be a show I enjoy and am proud of? Am I living my Truth?  

These questions sometimes elicit sobering answers from my mind. Because they are tough ones. Sure, they can be wonderful tools of motivation, serving to remind me of what is most important. But they are also tools of torture. The questions sometimes haunt as much they inspire.

Because, you see, somebody else didn’t get to ask themselves these questions again. Somebody didn’t get another reminder that it is time to make good, time to be bigger and more authentic. I hate that part of it.

When someone my own age or younger than me dies, it is particularly haunting. It makes me start to think it is all borrowed time from here on out. I have to live the kind of life that will allow me to answer those big questions affirmatively precisely because that person didn’t get a chance to. They weren’t allowed the golden opportunity of this day to do something greater, to love bigger, to chase their dreams longer and harder. I get this day that they don’t, and I feel like I owe it to them to do my absolute best, both in my heart and in the world.

I have to stop limiting myself. I have to claim my dreams and give myself fewer excuses for not getting them done. I have to rid my life of the things and people that waste my precious time and energy so that I can devote those resources to doing what I love with the people that I love in the service of this world that I love. Nothing less than that. No compromises. I simply have to be more brave and more disciplined with the life my soul calls upon me to live, for all of the nonguaranteed moments I have left. Death will come for me one day, unbidden, and I would like to be in the midst of something magnificent when it does.

How about you? How can you go about living so as to make your death, whenever it may come, more palatable to you? Open up your journal and make an honest assessment of what you need to do to make the most of your remaining days on this Earth. In what areas are you currently falling short of your standards for a life well-lived? Are you aware of ways that you can right the ship? How much work will it take: is it tweaks or monumental shifts? Are you committed to making the change? Are you like me and sometimes need something as shocking as a death to wake you up to the ways you have gone astray and the need to get back to your Truth before your time is up? What other moments have you had that were reminders of how short this life is? What can you do to keep your priorities front and center, to not waste a day? Is the prospect of death enough to embolden you to live your dreams? I encourage you to go back up a few paragraphs to the italics and ask yourself those questions of existence that are pressing upon me now. I hope your answers to those questions are motivation enough to point you in the direction of your True North. Leave me a reply and let me know: What must you do to make the most of your dash, however short or long it may be?

Be unapologetically you,

William

P.S. If this got you to consider your existence, and perhaps imagine some new possibilities, I encourage you to share it. We all need a little reminder sometimes. Be well!

The New Mount Rushmore?

DSC_0880“You can tell that something isn’t right, When all your heroes are in black and white” –John Mayer

Hello friend,

Last month, basketball superhero LeBron James sparked a flurry of debate when he named his “Basketball Mount Rushmore”. Everyone and their dog and had an opinion—I came down on Jordan, Russell, Kareem, and Magic, in case you care—and it made for fascinating discussion. I have been stuck on the idea ever since. I have been debating in my head about who might belong on the Mount Rushmore of each sport, of authors, musicians, painters, actors, directors, talk show hosts, television characters, and on and on. You name it! It is great fodder for a friendly debate with your buddies over a cool beverage, or, in my case, journal material while I am swilling hot chocolate.

What I just realized, though, is that in all of my pondering over the million new versions of Mount Rushmore of the various fields, I never stopped to consider the real deal. What about the actual Mount Rushmore??? Is it above debate just because it is carved into a mountainside? And, perhaps more interestingly, how about a new one? Yeah, what if we could make an updated Mount Rushmore, from people prominent just since, say, 1960? This is within most of our lifetimes. We are kind of a short-term memory, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately kind of people these days, so maybe this is just right for us. I’m giving it a shot!

I have to start with Martin Luther King, Jr., mainly because when I started thinking about the revising the real Mount Rushmore, he was the first one that came to my mind in terms of an iconic figure who truly shaped the way we live and the way we see the world today (See ya, Teddy Roosevelt!). If he can make it on my all-time list, he can definitely make the Modern Mount Rushmore. This one is my no-brainer.

Here is where it gets tough! Our society has changed so much in the last 50-plus years. The Presidents—or anyone else for that matter—don’t get put on pedestals like they used to. We have become much more into our celebrities and our electronic devices than we have our politicians. With that in mind, I think we have to consider people for our Modern Rushmore who represent not so much change in our national policies as much as in our culture as a whole, the way we live.

In the world of entertainment, the face that keeps coming to me is Oprah. Think about it: if you had an amazing tale to tell the world and were going to pick one person to interview you for a prime-time special, who would you pick? Oprah is more famous, wealthy, and powerful than any of the famous, wealthy, and powerful people she chooses to interview. She is an accomplished actor, producer, and talk show host, and, oh yeah, has a magazine and an entire network named after her. I know that not everyone loves Oprah, but enough people do, and she is undeniably an icon.

If entertainment is going to get a face on the Modern Mount Rushmore, I think technology needs one, too. It is simply who we have become in recent years, and that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Unfortunately for me, my knowledge of the hierarchy of tech giants is miniscule. I have to guess the main candidates that have shaped our way of life more than anyone else are Apple’s Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of Microsoft in the computer industry, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in the social media sphere. Because I am writing on a MacBook right now and have an iPhone in my pocket, I am going to give my Modern Rushmore face to Steve Jobs. I remember my elementary school getting one Apple IIe on a rolling cart and how excited I was when it was my classroom’s turn to use it for the day so we could play “Oregon Trail”. I also remember being just completely in awe of the iPod when it came out, how I could suddenly fit my hundreds of CDs in my pocket. It seems that, in our technology-driven world, the Gotta-Have-It items all come from Apple. Steve Jobs, you are on the mountain!

Okay, one more spot to fill. It feels like we must have a President on there, doesn’t it? I mean, the actual Mount Rushmore is four Presidents, after all. This is a challenge. Kennedy, coming right at the beginning of our Modern period, is tempting, because we romanticize anyone who dies young (e.g. James Dean, Marilyn Monroe). It was a pretty brief presidency, though. Ronald Reagan is certainly an icon for Republicans. Hmmm…. The one that has me most tempted, however, is Obama. Yes, Obama. That probably sounds totally crazy, as he is still in office, has had highly controversial policies, and by most historians’ ratings is not even in the Top Ten for greatest Presidents of all-time (my quick study of websites shows him around 14 or 15, slightly behind Kennedy but ahead of the rest of the Presidents in the era we are considering). So why put his face on the Modern Mount Rushmore?

I think Obama symbolizes where this country is heading for future Presidential elections. In a relatively brief time, he went from an unknown, inexperienced Senator to an actual movement. With charisma and excellent speaking skills, young people in our country latched onto him. He became hot in the way a new Hollywood celebrity becomes hot. I foresee that happening more and more in our future. I think we will see–driven by social media–charismatic figures with less and less political experience rise to office on a wave of fame, similar to what Arnold Schwarzenegger did in California. Obama was actually qualified and a politician, but his meteoric rise, along with our society’s lust for celebrity, will encourage a greater variety of characters to give Presidential politics a shot. Like Steve Jobs or Oprah, he symbolizes not so much our heroes but who we are as a society and what drives us.

The question of trying to squeeze President Obama onto our Modern Mount Rushmore points up the problem of trying to put anyone on there anymore. We live in a society that has lost its innocence. Our media outlets no longer offer the President–or any other celebrity–privacy in any area of their lives. But more than that, our media—and us, frankly—have essentially given up on manners when it comes to speaking to or about our leaders. It has become normal for “mainstream” news networks to totally bash the President—whoever it is—both politically and personally. The late-night comedy talk show hosts are merciless. The President is no longer protected by the media. Whether or not the media knew about all of Kennedy’s behind-the-scenes shenanigans, the view that the public received was Camelot. It was the elegant wife and the beautiful kids growing up in the White House. It was idyllic. Compare that to Obama. He has the elegant wife and beautiful young kids, too, but no one is selling Camelot anymore. It just doesn’t sway the way it used to.

We are jaded. It is tough to make a hero these days. We know too much and allow too many shows of disrespect to our leaders to allow anyone to get their balance on the pedestal, much less to take root there. We build people up to tear them down the next week, moving from one flavor to the next in our attention-deficit media minds. I shudder to think who we would put on the Rushmore of the next 50 years. The sculptor’s mountain would turn quickly into a molehill, because he would be scraping off the faces and starting over every few weeks as we turned our latest heroes to villains. Needless to say, the age of carving faces into mountains is probably long behind us.

So, after all of this, has the idea of creating a Modern Mount Rushmore been a waste of thoughts? Have I been chasing the wind? Maybe so. Maybe it is impossible to make lasting heroes today. It is certainly getting harder, anyway. That makes me a little sad to think about. Maybe the thing is to not try to make a mountain for everyone, but rather, carve your stone in your own backyard. Find the people in your world–however unknown they may be to others—who inspire you, who are worth emulating. Tell people about the faces on your rock. Ask other people which faces are on theirs. Make your rock matter to you. But have one! Find people to be inspired by. They are out there.

Okay, it is time to unload your thoughts into your journal. Who do you think deserves a spot on the Modern Mount Rushmore? Does anyone from your modern list kick someone off the actual Mount Rushmore? Do you agree with me that the modern version should include some non-political figures? What about your personal rock? What is it about those four people that lands them there? Why should we come to know them? This is a topic that can go a lot of ways, so be open-minded and think deeply. Leave me a reply and let me know: who is on your list?

You are amazing,

William