'Too young to die'

It's difficult to understand why we die when we do

Good morning, and welcome to Monday.

It’s still Sunday for me - I’m over in the USA at the moment - and for those in a cooler climate I can report it’s a steamy 40 degrees celsius here in Dallas, Texas.

The way the time difference works is that I pretty much have a full day over here, then Australia wakes up around 5pm my time and here I go again - the start of a new day.

I wonder sometimes if we have enough gratitude for simply waking up each morning.

I was thinking about this as I read about the sad death of someone who I didn’t know, but felt like I did.

Sam Tatam (pictured above) wrote a most excellent book called ‘Evolutionary Ideas’.

The central premise of which is that all ideas come from other ideas. That is, something had to be created first (in history, in marketing, in pop culture) for other things to be a derivative from.

The argument Sam lays out is something that I use and derive my own workshop materials from. While I don’t directly copy him (as Sam didn’t in his work) I combine my own research and original thoughts to evolve the thinking. Hence ‘evolutionary ideas’.

The book was published in 2022 and Sam - who also held senior leadership roles at advertising and creative agencies - was riding a career high.

I connected with him on LinkedIn and we exchanged some brief pleasanteries when the book was released.

So it was quite the shock when I saw (also on LinkedIn) that he passed away after a brief battle with cancer.

His last Linkedin post just one week ago today is heartbreaking…

Sam was only 39.

Thirty-nine.

It’s way too young to die, but let’s face it - most ages are. I can’t think of an age that I’d be happy to say that it was my time to go.

Obviously I do this through the lens of being in good health and under 50, so I’m sure there’ll be a time where I will likely think I’ve had enough.

Also I am extremely grateful that I don’t live in any pain or with a disease and for people who want to alleiviate their suffering I’m fully supportive of.

But it does make me think a lot about the latin phrase, Omnes una manet nox. One night awaits us all. We all have a shared mortality.

I just hope I can remember to wake up each morning and be grateful that I have. I’m sure Sam wanted many more.

Vale Sam.

See you next Monday Morning,

Wade