I was never one to put much stock in magic or myth nor legend nor superstition. I never negated that it existed, I just felt that it would only ‘work’ if I believed in it. For example, I know ghosts are probably real, but I don’t go out of my way to get better and summoning them, for if I do, I probably will start seeing dead people.
That said, I never took much stock into the Law of Three. Until now. In the Red Ravine blog (which I Googled), Bob Chrisman states: “The basic Law of Threes states that all bad things happen in groups of three. Only bad things, never good ones. The [hard] law states that if a death places the law in motion, the next two events must involve deaths.
[Full text can be found here: http://redravine.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/the-law-of-threes/ ]
Within the last 24 hours we have lost 3 major icons in American history and arguably, world history. Genius Innovator Steve Jobs, Civil Rights hero Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and Legal Scholar Derrick Bell.
Like most people, I learned about Steve Jobs passing on Social Media, Facebook actually. The news hit me like a ton of bricks. I can still remember my first time ever working on a Mac, learning how to use Pagemaker (ancient history) in my one and only computer class requirement for my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. I remember working part time at a local print shop, designing flyers in TypeStyler on a tiny Mac Plus with a tiny screen and a sloth-like processor that forced me to watch a little tiny paintbrush swish back and forth as my funky type effects were rendering. My first Mac was a Performa LC III that I purchased from CompUSA (remember them?). I walked in and proudly pointed to the shelf, “That’s the one I want, but I want to upgrade to 8mb of Ram” and I bought myself a copy of Ram Doubler, because I do things to the extreme, the dubious software that utilized Virtual Memory to boost the ram to 16mb. I was in Mac Heaven and I was in business. My kids were barely old enough to support their own heads when I had them on my lap, tapping at the keyboard and playing educational games from the JumpStart series. 18 years later and I’m still working on Macs. Right now in my studio is a “sunflower” model iMac (as a paperweight), a 15” PowerPC G4 laptop, a 17” MacBook Pro, a G5 Tower, an iPad a 21.5” iMac and a 27” iMac. I’m such a Mac fanatic that I can’t even get myself to throw away the packaging. My whole family has iPhones and once you go Mac, you never go back. I’ve raised my kids Mac. I’ve defended Mac vs PC’s too many times to count, and yes, I drive around with an Apple sticker on my car (what else are you supposed to do with them?).
Clearly, Steve Jobs has influenced the world and changed it forever. He wanted to ‘put a ding in the universe’ and he accomplished much more than that in his 56 years. Not only did he change our lives with technology, but he has touched many with his philosophies on life, which may have gotten even more profound once he was faced with an incurable pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His 2005 commencement address to Stanford University, the subject of which was his own story of being a college dropout who had been given up for adoption as a newborn, strikes a cord with anyone who has ever felt insignificant or incapable of making a difference. His commencement address has graced the walls of so many of my Facebook and Google+ friends that at any given moment my newsfeeds are entirely Steve Jobs quotes. One that sticks out as being one of the most popular is this one:
“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
The full text of Steve Jobs commencement speech can be found here:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
I could go on, but I promised to keep my blog posts short, because I am a firm believer of, as my former boss, Jay Walker taught me, that ‘people don’t read” and I certainly would appreciate my posts being read once in awhile.
But back to the Law of Threes, because Jobs wasn’t the only person of note to pass away yesterday, and thanks to Social Media, I don’t have to be left in the dark. Surprising as it may be, not EVERYONE knew who Steve Jobs was. My own wife, God bless her soul, wasn’t sure who Steve Jobs was, meanwhile, I practically worship the guy and have based my career on using his inventions. By the same token, not EVERYONE knew who the Rev. Shuttlesworth was, nor who Mr. Derrick Bell was. Actually, some people found Rev. Shuttlesworth death, or even Derrick Bell’s death to be more significant than Job’s passing. But can you really measure how ‘significant’ a man’s death is by the legacy he left behind? I went and clicked some of these other links, and learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once called Shuttlesworth, "the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South." I also went onto learn that in 1957 Shuttlesworth was beaten with chains and whips as he sought to integrate an all-white public school. He also participated in organizing the Freedom Rides against segregated interstate buses in the South when he joined forces with the Congress On Racial Equality.
[More of Rev, Shuttlesworth’s contributions to race equality in America can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/us/obit-rev-fred-shuttlesworth/index.html ]
I also was unfamiliar with Derrick Bell, who like Steve Jobs had also succumbed to the wrath of cancer, and again, thanks to my Facebook friends, I had no shortage of statuses, links, comments and articles to choose from to educate myself on this great American man’s legacy.
According to his bio at The HistoryMakers:
In 1971, Bell became the first African American to become a tenured professor at Harvard Law School. There, he established a course in civil rights law and wrote Race, Racism and American Law, which today is a standard textbook in law schools around the country. Leaving Harvard, Bell became the first African American dean of the University of Oregon Law School, and in 1985, he resigned in protest after the university directed him not to hire an Asian American candidate for a faculty position. Returning to Harvard Law School, Bell would again resign in protest in 1992 over the school's failure to hire and offer tenure to minority women.
[The full article on Mr. Derrick Bell can be found here:
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/legal-scholar-derrick-bell-jr-dies-80 ]
This all reminds me of a speech given by our special guest, the Rev. Al Sharpton at my fraternity’s (Alpha Phi Alpha) National Convention in Chicago earlier this year. Love him or hate him, Rev. Al has that black preacher’s style that can give you the chills and get you pumped up just about anything. In his speech, he spoke of a great eulogy he had given for a close friend. After the funeral service, another man walked up to Rev. Al and asked him if he’d do him the honor of speaking about him at his funeral one day. He explained how much he loved the eulogy and wanted one just like it. I’m paraphrasing here, but Reverend Al’s response was, “Sure, I can do your eulogy, but you’ve got to give me something to work with!”
The point is that all three of these men that we have lost tragically will be sorely missed and have left a void in their absence. In their own way, whether by technological advances, or fighting for human rights, civil rights equality and desegregation, they all have chosen to stand up and make a difference. They stood for something. They accomplished great feats. They changed the world. They have left a legacy in their wake. What will your legacy be? Will it be more than someone’s Facebook status?
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