A childhood friend of ours shared the following observation with me.  “He was a very good friend who I have always known and thought of as a good person with a kind heart and a desire to do well by others.  In my experience he was never mean or spiteful or judgmental of others and that is not really all that common.”

His entire life, Steve sought to be recognized, accepted and appreciated.  He would make a plan, find a group of friends to build that stage of his life around, and try to achieve his goal.  During that time, the network of friends would sustain him through those efforts.  He gave freely in return for that.  He has been described as being entirely selfless; he would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.  As time passed with each group, he would come to the natural challenges that serve as tests and barriers to achieving dreams.  Invariably his friends would, as his family had in the past, question the path, or offer advice.  And then things would change.  Steve didn’t take criticism very well.  Even if you didn’t question his goal, if you challenged the manner in which he was pursuing it, he backed away.  Time and again throughout his life, I watched him treat those questions as betrayals.  He would pack up and move on, resurfacing months or even years later in a new group, with a new plan in place.  Each time he moved, he rebuilt that life around himself.  He found loving, supportive people, and he touched their lives in the process.  And they supported.  And they accepted.  But ultimately, they questioned … and he moved on.  If there is one tragic footnote to my brother’s life, it would be this:  he never realized that he had already found the acceptance he craved – repeatedly.   Over and over, time and time again, he rebooted his life and recreated his perfect world, and then ran away from it when it threatened to engulf him in questions, doubt or commitment.  I don’t believe my brother ever understood the extent to which he touched people’s lives.  I don’t believe he ever recognized the depth of the love and concern he brought out in people.  He wanted unconditional acceptance, and never understood that the world doesn’t work that way.

Maybe Steve had it right though.  Maybe that’s why he found such ready acceptance time and again.  There was something in his message that people recognized; perhaps even something they wished was true.