I’m Listening, Because This Matters

Tak­ing pot­shots at the places I place my atten­tion. I attend to the sick at work. My atten­tion is riv­eted on my work much of the day. I make up sto­ries about it mat­ter­ing. My life does inter­sect with your death or your near-death or your ill­ness or dis­com­fort. I get involved with that and get paid for that. Paid well. Your health mat­ters to you like mine does to me. Still, as a con­cept, work doesn’t hold my affec­tion the way art does, the way love does, or beauty, or your smile at my dour mug, or the way the reflec­tion in a car win­dow makes a quick lit­tle movie on a tiny lit­tle movie screen as I walk by. I hold lots of affec­tion for that.

Steve Jobs died a month or so after he retired. I don’t know really any­thing about him, but I make up another story, and that is that he worked a lot. He changed my life from way over there, wher­ever there was for him. To do that, he was crank­ing. Tire­lessly, he must have worked tire­lessly. Even though I am given the gift of lit­er­ally being inside you when I work, I don’t have any drive to be tire­less at it. I couldn’t. I have worked insane hours and it takes from me. Not to be trite or obvi­ous, but I find that ter­ri­bly hard to do. My per­son­al­ity gets drained and emp­tied from it. I know sur­geons who are the oppo­site. They feed on it. I try to imag­ine my poor per­son­al­ity try­ing to get a meal out of con­stant work and my stom­ach rum­bles. The more I work the emp­tier my energy gets. Not Steve Jobs. Don’t you think it had to fill him? Did it fill him the way the plung­ing syringe fills the junkie? Was it like water to a thirsty thirsty man? One month after retir­ing, he retired. Work­ing long enough is exhaust­ing, as in: I was tired before, but now I am re-tired. Peace to you, Steve Jobs, and to all the work­ing, worked-out, tired, dying and the dead.