- Albert Einstein

BUCKY

He had reached a life crisis. At age 32, after failing at everything he attempted, R. Buckminster Fuller decided he would take his own life.

One midnight in 1927 he sat on the huge cold rocks on the shore of Lake Michigan, staring into the deep dark water, and dwelt on his failures. In stature he measured only 5'2", furthermore he was neither aggressive not competitive by nature. He had been expelled from Harvard in his freshman year. He had failed repeatedly in a series of business attempts. The year before, he had done all he could, but it was not enuf to prevent his precious child from dying in her cradle. Tho a new daughter was recently born, he was still grieving and suffering deep depression.

The world was later to know "Bucky" Fuller as the internationally celebrated genius who invented of the geodesic dome plus dozens of other architectural and engineering marvels. But that night he had reached the nadir in his life: He was forced to accept that he was not destined to be even a mediocre player in the grand game of getting and spending - the role that was expected of him and all men. Broke, with no job and plagued by despair, he said to himself, "What's the point? Everything I touch turns to shit".

The year was 1927 when he sat on the hard rocks with the cold wind to his back, pondering his lousy luck and finding not a single reason to go on living. He was not even a good husband and father, he thought, and feared that his infant daughter might die, as did the first, with him helpless to prevent it. It was too much to bear, his inadequacies. He looked into the black water and thought about the burden he must be to his small family. He was a major impediment to their happiness. They were young, he reasoned. He loved them. They deserved a chance for a new start in life. His death would liberate them.

So there on the shore, with the angry waves crashing at his feet, the moment of decision had come. But before jumping, the young reader of philosophy felt he had to review and examine his most fundamental values. Each individual, including himself, he reflected, was an integral part in the unity and order of the universe. He was but a tiny fragment, but not an insignificant one. The poet John Donne had written years before that the clod of clay washed from the shore makes the continent less. As he pondered, it gradually came to him why his efforts had been in vain: He had been struggling to please his surrogate parents - who had appeared in the form of employers and institutions. How could I please a fantasy? Have I been living for an illusion? he asked. Why not start living for himself instead? If my problem stems from seeking the love and approval of fantasy parents, he decided, I must be insane.

Live for himself? Better yet, he could live for mankind. He could give up the quest for worldly success; he could stop running the treadmill race. "You must choose between making money and making sense," he said to himself. "The two are mutually exclusive." What is this obsession about reaching goals?

By first light that morning he had decided that he would go on living - but not as before: He would live as though he had died that night; he would begin a new life. Being now dead, his new life could be an experiment. No more trying to please middle management "parents". From then on, eschewing profit and gain, he would examine the question, as Ben Franklin did, "What is it on this planet that needs doing …that probably won't happen unless I take responsibility for it?"

As dawn broke he had resolved to live henceforth as an employee of the Universe. All his work would be for the good of humankind. He devoted his mind and time and energy to contributing to the community where he lived by simply Being - and doing what was there to be done. Because it was no longer personal, he no longer took criticism personally. And criticism was inevitable since he was certainly an oddity, thinking like no one else on "spaceship earth", as he called it. "Why don't I simply do what needs doing here, go ahead and do it, and not sweat the results?" he asked himself. The question really became: What do I really care about? and, What is the best and simplest contribution I can give to it?

Fuller, inspired with a new and selfless purpose in life, withdrew into seclusion. When he emerged two years later, having looked deeply into himself, he had resolved to begin "the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them... finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more" Henceforth he devoted his mind and creative energy to contributing to the world community by simply Being, by trusting his Humanity, his Basic Goodness. His Inherent Wisdom. In so doing, he was touching his Basic Sanity, his Authentic Being, as old and as universal as the Teachings of Buddhism.

He was 85 when we talked, one-on-one, in 1980. He had already been presented with forty-four honorary degrees and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, yet his modesty and his compassion was profoundly impressive. In Corning, NY, that day he had dazzled us by filling the blackboard wall-to-wall with the math and equations he used to work out his geodesic and dymaxion theories, and then he told us, with disarming conviction, that each one of us could do as well. Such was his faith that, buried beneath our years of conditioning there is Basic Intelligence. We had only to peal away the layers of misinformation, illusions, and lies. Then we, too, can tap it.

In private we talked about our prospects for surviving as a world, a planet, a species. Eight years before there had been a hair-raising confrontation with U.S.S.R. over nuclear weapons in Cuba. Our beloved earth-home is in peril, he said. With unbridled nationalism and Pentagon pugnacity, what chance did we have? And with rampant capitalism exploiting and poisoning the planet, what would be left of "spaceship earth"? We ended our sober discussion with his emphasizing the urgent need for the coming generation - the People - to find ways to control and curb "the aggression of governments and the greed of corporations". Nothing less could stop it.

"Bucky" was to live only three more years.

- Norm