Steve Jobs has died at the ridiculously young age, by today's standards, of 56. He had told people he had pancreatic cancer in 2004. I expect all of us know he was the joint founder of an American company called Apple. Apple's market value is estimated at £227bn. Steve Jobs personal wealth was estimated at £5.4bn in 2010.
These are enormous numbers yet he is dead. No amount of financial wealth made it possible for him to survive the cancer. I am not certain I know what death means and I do not know what it meant for him, or for any of us, but it is obvious that, whatever it is and however it happens, it is unavoidable.
I have felt a sense that if you do something more right, use your life more meaningfully, it will not happen to you. You can avoid death somehow, or at least it is still a long way off and does not have to be dealt with right now. By ignoring the fact of our own death we can continue scurrying around keeping busy with only minimal reflection on what it all means.
Steve Job's death has focused me in on the random nature of our own survival in this life. I cannot say what happens next, following what I expect to be the cessation of my own consciousness but I can be in awe and appreciation for the engagement I have with life even though what I have now is beyond my full understanding.
I feel a sadness at his death and technologically speaking he has made a difference but it has also given me a freshness to see that we can lose life long before our expected time. I am therefore grateful that I am alive and happy to be here. It is not the difficulties I am focused on at the present time but the celebration that I can function healthily and can still have the energy to think of new ways of being of service to the world I find myself in.
I believe he was a Buddhist. I hope his faith and what it meant was good for him.
He once said "Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people." Perhaps I would like to expand that to 'Great things are not done by one person but by all of us working together'.
