This last month saw the sad loss of a favorite actor of many people. The suicide of Robin Williams was a sudden shock and has resulted in a large amount of coverage for the actor’s films and has heightened depression awareness. It seems that all you can see right now on social media and the news is articles about the man, his life, his films, and his untimely death. Suicide is of course an important issue and Robin Williams was obviously loved by a lot of people, but I can’t help thinking the story has run away with itself.
It’s interesting how people can assign importance to certain events. What a lot of people missed was that in the same week that Robin Williams sadly died, so did Major General Harold J. Greene. The general was not as well known, but a very important event non-the-less. Maj. Gen. Greene is the highest ranking US army officer to be killed in battle since the Vietnam War. That is a big threat to our armed forces. I’m not here to debate which of these events is more important. What I want to do is throw up the fact that different people find different things important for different reasons. It also caused me to reflect on my own mortality.
What you need to realize is that something that you might think is the most important thing, something you might be concentrating on and spending a lot of time optimizing, might not be considered important at all by others. I tried to be more aware of this situation in my own life. In your company, all of your employees have issues that affect their lives and their job performance. It could be an unhappy marriage or a recent health concern. How many of us are even aware of these issues? Each of your clients has numerous issues that they also must face on a daily basis. We try to protect their business as best as we can, but we can only do so much.
Mortality is a different concern for different people. We have all lost a close friend or relative. I still consider myself young and in excellent physical condition, but I have lost three of my closest friends in the last 10 years. One died tragically, one died from an extended illness and one died suddenly without any warning. Our job is to help owners perpetuate their business. I see many people that should be doing something, but feel like they have plenty of time. Hopefully, you don’t have the same misfortune as my close friends.
General Greene and Robin Williams were great in their own respective fields. We should thank Robin Williams for all those times he entertained us. We should especially need to thank leaders such as General Greene for their sacrifice and service. We live in a confusing world where comics suffer from depression and serviceman die at the hands of our allies. Most of us will never leave a legacy as meaningful as General Greene or Robin Williams. We may not mean that much to millions of people. I believe that it is enough to mean that much to just a few close friends and relatives.
