Born Alone, Die Alone: What Does This Mean?

[Shapiro, Fred]

Sorry, Wilson.  I was focusing on a very literal level.  I think we all have a sense of what Jobs meant on an existential level.

Fred Shapiro




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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Wilson Gray [hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 2:57 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Born Alone, Die Alone: What Does This Mean?

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Other variations on the theme include "You're born naked, you die
> naked" and "You're born broke, you die broke" (i.e., you can't take it
> with you, or as John Lennon put it, you don't take nothing with you
> but your soul).
>

Isn't it the case that Jobs was never acknowledged by his biological
father and given up for adoption by his mother? And cf. the old blues,
"God Bless The Child"?

I don't that Jobs had in mind being physically alone, in the literal
sense. If mere physical loneliness is the only kind of loneliness that
a person has experienced, then he's a "fortunate son," luckier than
99.44% of the rest of mankind.

How can Jobs's observation possibly be hard to understand?! Geez!

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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