My Spin For Kids campaign. Thank you.
Ok, a quick note about Steve Jobs. Sorry in advance that I'm about to piss off a bunch of readers here.
I'm not sad that Steve is gone. Here, I said it openly. Why not?
Of course I'm not happy that such a wonderful person is no longer
here, but I'm not sad from his actual death. Having spent a year with a
dying and suffering person - Liam - I think I can identify with Steve's
suffering, I can sympathize with the "smell of death" he must have
sensed. But that's about it. Now he's gone. The suffering is gone and
I'm glad for that. He left his mark on society and technology and
business. I'm glad I was here to witness it. I'm glad I'm enjoying his
creation, his innovation, his vision. That's pretty much it.
glad + glad + glad ≠ sad
(but just to clarify, [glad + glad + glad ≠ happy] either. The math is not necessarily that simple.)
And really, nobody should have been
surprised of his death. It was coming, it was expected. Unlike Liam,
where the writing was on the wall, Steve told us explicitly "I'm
dying". Now THAT is sad! Are all the people who express their sadness
in public now also felt sad for the past several years when he fought
his illness? It just doesn't make sense to me to be sad NOW.
RIP, Steve: I often think what does that mean, why we say it, and
who do we say it to. Steve cannot hear this wish any more. (The
wishers should have delivered it to him PRIOR to his death, not now -
DUH!) We don't really know what happens after death (did we cover this
topic already?) All we know is that the physical body decomposes over
time. So how do we know if he goes to rest? How do we know if resting
in peace is what he needs? How do we even know that we can talk about
him as if he's alive? And why do we speak to the dead as if they can
hear us? In other words, we say RIP for our own need/wish/whatever.
Maybe I know how to cope with illness and death, or maybe I'm just an insensitive SOB.
(I hope you understand that none of the above yammering shows any
disrespect to Steve or diminishes what an outstanding man he was.)
Hard as it is for me to say it, I agree with you on this.
ReplyDeleteThe sadness people feel (if they feel and don't just utter the words, as is customary in your country) is for themselves in these situations.