All life is created, not scripted

The death of Aaron Swartz was both sad and humbling. 

Humbling because, at the age of 26, Mr. Swartz could accomplish more in 7 days than I may in my entire lifetime. He was undoubtedly a genius; a gift that often comes with a price. If ignorance is bliss, genius can be misery.

Mr. Swartz was a member of the technology community so most of the people writing about his death are writing about a subject they don't typically discuss. The vast majority of the conversation has struck me as missing the truth of the situation.

Aaron broke the law and got himself into some trouble. Getting into that type of trouble would be terrible regardless if it were warranted or not. It was not prosecution that killed Aaron, it was mental illness. If Aaron had died of cancer, we might mention the stress of his legal troubles but probably wouldn't be pointing to them as the cause. As a society, why do we treat deadly diseases of the mind so differently?

To point fingers, justly or unjustly, is to ignore the truth. Chronic mental disease killed Aaron Swartz. Like cancer, mental illness does not discriminate. I find myself wondering if Aaron's genius may have done him a disservice as he likely talked his way out of many offers of help. I'm sure he could have fooled a vast majority of professionals much less any layperson.

Aaron had a deadly disease that took his life. Without that disease he would have continued his tremendous contributes to society and lived a very full life; regardless of his legal circumstances.

"Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars."

A lack of mental fitness affects us all at different points throughout our lives. Like physical heath there are some life practices that can help. But, also as with physical health, sometimes professional help is required. When in doubt, get help.

How can we help ourselves? Neuroscientist Sam Harris makes an interesting point in his "Lost in Thought" memo:

Linguistic thought is indispensable to us. It is the basis for planning, explicit learning, moral reasoning, and many other capacities that make us human. Thinking is the substance of every social relationship and cultural institution we have. It is also the foundation of science. But our habitual identification with the flow of thought — that is, our failure to recognize thoughts as thoughts, as transient appearances in consciousness — is a primary source of human suffering and confusion.

Depression, stress, anxiety, etc. are often created or worsened simply by thinking too much - we think and think and think and literally drive ourselves crazy. Most of the time we're not thinking about reality, we are imagining scenarios. We tell ourselves adult versions of ghost stories; we make believe.

We too often think there is a "way it is supposed to be" out there somewhere - if only things were "the way they were supposed to be" then I'd be good. Even worse we think "if the future is this way" then I'll be good but "what if that doesn't happen" - the future never does happen. Literally. And worst of all, we think "if only that 'had' happened" I would be OK. But the universe doesn't work that way.

We can never be "off script". All life is created in THIS moment.

As physicist Lee Smolin talks about in his "Thinking in Time Versus Thinking Outside of Time" memo:

On the other hand, if we take the reality of time as evident, then there can be no mathematical object that is perfectly isomorphic [equal] to the world, because one property of the real world that is not shared by any mathematical object is that it is always some moment [emphasis added].

The weight of an unfair world seems to have weighed heavily on Mr. Swartz. And tragically, chronic disease stole his ability to see the beautiful work of art he was creating.

Obviously Mr. Swartz's work was critical to creating a better world and should be continued. But if we're going to make him a martyr, his testament is to the disease of mental illness. We owe it to other people, family and friends fighting a very difficult disease in THIS moment.