I just read an interesting article on human behavior. It is not normal behavior, but it is human behavior.
How do we react when our closest relationships end? What do we do to cope? How do we move on?
Do we ever fully let go?
These are the questions that reading that article raised in my mind.
The article in question: “Tim Cook kept Steve Jobs in his iPhone contacts for years after he died.”
Nearly three and a half years have passed since Apple cofounder Steve Jobs died from pancreatic cancer, but his successor as CEO, Tim Cook, kept his friend’s contact information in his iPhone long afterward.
As revealed in Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, which hits physical and digital shelves on Tuesday, Cook wasn’t quick to delete Jobs’ contact details following his 2011 death.
The article indicates that Tim Cook held Steve Jobs in very high regards, they were friends. They were close friends. The impact of Jobs’ death may have had profound impact on Cook.
This really made me think. How profound was that impact of that person that I loved for most of my life?
I know that I have cleaned out my contact list on my phones many times over the years. There are people that I just do not talk to anymore and I have deleted them. I do not need their numbers and so I deleted their numbers.
I picked up my iPhone. I opened my contact list. I quickly scrolled to my lifetime-long best friend’s name, Margaret Goins. Was she still there?
To my amazement, she was.
Then the memories of the times I had sat there over the past five and half years and contemplated that very name. Where I sat there contemplating that very action – delete. It was so final. So complete. In one tap of my finger I could remove one more memory of a lifetime spent together and erase one more pang of hurt.
The thing is, what does it hurt? What does it hurt to leave Margaret’s name in my iPhone all these years? When I stumble upon her name, I stop and take a second long pause and remember my dear friend. In that second my heart hurts. My heart remembers the friend lost and the friend gone. My heart then remembers the times we had that were joyful and delights in the times we had together.
No, I do not have to let go entirely. I have gotten up every day since Margaret passed away those long years ago. I have moved on in life. I, however, have not forgotten the ways that Margaret made my life full and rich. I have not forgotten the simple ways that Margaret made me who I was just because she was who she was.
I do not have to let go. I do not have to make it final. So I still have my best friend’s name and phone number in my iPhone’s contact list more than 5 years after she died. I do not regret it for one minute. In those minutes I get to remember her. People might think I am crazy, but my life does not wallow in the sorrow. Life delights in the joy and what has become.
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