Hope
I've been thinking a bit more about Gene Kan over the last few days. I didn't know Gene; I saw him speak once, but that hardly counts. And I'm not going to presume that I can understand what must have been going on in his head in the last few days of his life.
But I can guess. Based on my personal experiences, I can understand the emotions involved when someone invests themselves in a project or a job so much that it becomes them, that their very identity becomes linked to it–and then that identity goes away. Sure, successful people may throw themselves deeply into their work, but depending on work for happiness and fulfillment(especially today) is a risky proposition at best.
I suspect that Gene, a success by almost any standard at age 25, measured himself by a standard that no one could ever live up to, and that he invested much of his being into his work. His disappointment with the software business was palpable in the CNet column he wrote on June 21. The joy was gone.
In his weblog, Gene complained about the financial markets–it's clear that the downward path of the Sun stock he got in exchange for InfraSearch was a source of aggravation. His posts, once long and filled with dark humor, became dark, humorless and terse at the end.
The weight of doom that's sat on the tech sector could suck the joy out of almost anyone. And if your outside interests were, say, world affairs, the general pessimism that springs from political conditions in the world and the suffering of so many because of the apparent stupidity, greed and intractability of a few sure wouldn't help your mood.
The trip from irrational exhuberance to hopelessness is a short one. It's the same eternal question that Shakespeare's Hamlet pondered–with things stacked so mightily against things changing for the better, where's the hope? Is fighting “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” not futile?
Noam Chomsky said once (as is recounted in his book,Understanding Power):
- …[I]f you want to feel hopleless, there are a lot of things you could feel hopeless about. If you want to work out objectively what's the chance that the human speciaes will survive for another century, probably not very high. But I mean, what's the point? First of all, those predictions don't mean anything–they're more of a reflection of your mood or your personality than anything else. And if you act on that assumption, then you're guaranteeing that that'll happen. If you act on the assumption that things can change, well, maybe they will. Okay, the only rational choice, given those alternatives, is to forget pessimism.
The only answer, then, to that age old question, is to fight and hope; to take all there is that weighs down on you and turn it upside down. Battle; fight; live. For in battle, there is always a chance of victory; to give up hope is to surrender life.
But to battle doesn't mean to lash out randomly; it means overcoming adversity and finding new ways to move forward, new battlefields to fight on. To use a financial metaphor, that means diversifying the psychic portfolio; finding personal balance (through family, friends, and other interests) to strengthen your position, and to provide positions to fall back on when things on one front turn for the worse.
Did Gene have a fallback position? Maybe he didn't think he did, or couldn't bring himself to move to it. I don't pretend to know; I only wish he had. Fighters of his caliber aren't easily replaced, and the battle for hope remains.
Sean M. Gallagher 