(Photo by Laila Comolli)
Over the past few days, I've listed a couple articles about the tragic death of Tony Hsieh, an entrepreneur who co-founded Zappos, the online shoe service, and who was known as a one-man ambassador of hope.
Among his many accomplishments, he reinvigorated a neglected area of downtown Las Vegas to become a vital center of commerce and culture, and was in the process of trying to do the same for Park City, Utah.
If you think about it we do not have many ambassadors of hope among us; that's a pretty rare quality. I sensed his impact when I was a tech industry blogger years ago and I interviewed a group of Zappos employees who seemed unusually inspired by working at his company.
I never met Tony or knew much about him so I was ignorant of his obsession with hope and his mission to spread hopefulness among everyone he encountered. But I definitely sensed its impact among that group of people who worked for him in Soma.
According to the recent profiles in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, Tony pivoted from hope to hopelessness in recent years and his downfall was fueled by addiction to alcohol and drugs, which caused him to isolate himself from his many friends.
Among those personal friends was the singer Jewel, who visited Tony recently and was so deeply distressed by his condition that she wrote him afterward, warning him to seek help for his self-destructive tendencies, which apparently included literally playing with fire.
Her words proved tragically prescient. He died in a suspicious fire in the home where he was staying on Thanksgiving night. As the fire broke out, he reportedly locked himself in his room. He died of smoke inhalation.
During this pandemic, I've worried frequently about what all the alone time may be doing to all sorts of people. The studies are pretty clear: men, in particular, are not coping well with the loneliness of a disrupted life where they can't lift beers with friends or go to sports games.
Women are suffering just as much from not being able to see friends or even get their families together. But the women I know seem to be doing somewhat better adapting to virtual means of socializing like Zoom calls and the good old-fashioned method of phone conversations.
And even if you are unhappy, being able to share that with a friend can help.
But addiction can grow in a void, and many people encounter that void within themselves at a time like this. Most artists are well aware of what I'm talking about. That void is partly where the music, the painting, the writing, the dance, the design comes from. In an attempt to fill that void, they are reaching out to those who respond to their work. And sometimes it actually helps.
But when you have to work too hard filling the void, addictive substances that are all too available tend to show up at just the wrong time. Once present, they speak in a seductive voice that urges usage like that which may have led Tony Hsieh to his demise.
The only thing any of us can do about this problem, when the signs appear, is to pay attention. If you sense a loved one or a colleague is slipping into addictive behavior, be gentle but be firm. You've noticed something and you have to speak about it.
These are among the most difficult conversations you will ever have, every bit as hard as when a doctor tells a beloved patient she has a terminal disease, or a spouse tells a beloved partner that this just is not going to work out, we can't be together any longer.
So speaking out like the 46-year-old Jewel Kilcher did to the 46-year-old Tony Hsieh is the loving thing to do, because addiction is a terminal disease.
Stay silent, and your loved one will die of it. And the only worse thing then is knowing that you might have spoken up, but instead you remained silent, because it was too hard to say the words.
***
The news headlines:
* Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, tests positive for coronavirus, president says (WashPo) He has been admitted to Georgetown University Hospital. (CNN)
* Biden, Trump vie to project authority, making for a tense transition -- As President-elect Joe Biden signals he’s poised to take over the presidency, President Trump is acting like he hasn’t lost. (WashPo)
* The Elderly vs. Essential Workers: Who Should Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First? -- The C.D.C. will soon decide which group to recommend next, and the debate over the trade-offs is growing heated. Ultimately, states will determine whom to include. (NYT)
* Historic Church Damaged in East Village Fire -- The fire started in a vacant building early Saturday and spread to the 128-year-old Middle Collegiate Church next door, causing significant damage. (Storyfull)
* Japanese Space Capsule Ferries Bits of Asteroid to Earth -- A capsule from Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere Saturday after being launched in 2014 to explore and collect samples from an asteroid named Ryugu. It landed and was recovered in the Australian outback. (AP)
* Thousands protest in London against India's farming reforms (Reuters)
* Community colleges face steep declines in enrollment (WashPo)
* On A Tour Of 'America's Amazon,' Flora, Fauna And Glimpses Of Alabama's Past --A trip through the Mobile-Tensaw Delta offers a little bit of everything, from iris fields and gators, to Civil War history and the wreck of the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to America. (NPR)
* The Death of Zappos’s Tony Hsieh: A Spiral of Alcohol, Drugs and Extreme Behavior -- The inspirational executive seemed to lose his way after moving to a mansion in Utah and giving up his corporate role, including a starvation diet and fascination with fire.(WSJ)
* Most of California to impose stay-at-home orders by Sunday (WashPo)
* A Race Against Time to Rescue a Reef From Climate Change -- In an unusual experiment, a coral reef in Mexico is now insured against hurricanes. A team of locals known as “the Brigade” rushed to repair the devastated corals, piece by piece. (NYT)
* McCarthyism was never defeated. Trumpism won’t be either. (WashPo)
* My son just told me bras were invented to protect our boobs from Coronavirus. (Shuka Kalantari~شوکا/ Twitter)
***
Nirvana's brilliant leader, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide at the height of his fame in 1994. He was 27. Addiction was involved. His haunting words hangs in the air above all of our Gen Xers and the rest of us as well...
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy
Choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest as a friend
As an old
Memoria, memoria
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend
As an old
Memoria, memoria
No, I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun…
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