On Corporate America, The AWL, The Cost of College and What Life Is About

It is easy to dump on corporate America and their insatiable quest for profit. But there are times when individuals in these companies turn into real, honest to goodness human beings.

Such was the case with Pixar and the folks at Disney who went to the extraordinary step of granting a dying girl her death wish. Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, had a simple request. She wanted to see the new Pixar movie Up before she passed.

As the story goes, once Colby “saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it.” When it became evident that vascular cancer would take her before she would have the opportunity a family friend contacted Pixar.

And Pixar came through, flying an employee with a DVD copy of the movie so that Colby could get a private viewing of the movie in her own home. Seven hours after she saw the film, the little girl passed away.

Mother Lisa Curtin was effuse in her praise of Pixar and the speed at which the company responded. Not only did the movie light up her only child’s last day the balloons and the the movie theme helped Mom envision that Colby was going to go up to heaven.

In an even rarer move, Pixar officials refused to take actions to embellish their incredible giving actions. They declined to comment on the story and refused to name the employees involved.

For more of the story including just how the family friend managed to get through to Pixar click here.

The Awl

If you haven’t yet begun reading and following the folks at The Awl it is high time you did so. Irreverent, off-color, and most certainly politically incorrect, the site just gets the curiosity juices flowing.

Featuring the Superman Lovers- Starlight video on Friday for no explicable reason and of course wondering aloud as to when the rain on the East Coast just might stop, we are now hooked. It is there we learned of Colby and that yet another Hollywood remake was on the horizon, the immensely popular Fame.

Editorial guys Alex Balk and Choire Sicha and business guy David Cho have all the latest including a pipeline to those never-ending political absurdities. Read The Awl to be well, “Less Stupid.”

Paying for College

The idea that college is becoming too expensive for the average American has led to a real spate of articles of late. One of the more interesting pages to read is on the New York Times running commentary site, Room for Debate.

The piece, called Student Debt, Fool’s Gold? is a must read for current and prospective college students. The reason is that it features little from the Times and everything in the form of public commentary that forms the basis for the page, Room for Debate.

At last check there were nearly four hundred comments, most everyone of them worth reading. Our favorite was Kelly’s who took a different approach, earning her bachelor’s degree in Canada and her graduate degree in Europe at a fraction of the costs of American schools.

While collectively they might confuse the issue for some, there are individual comments that should help a reader clarify their own sentiment.

What Life Is About

And now that all the graduation speeches have been delivered we share one of our favorite pieces, “What Life Is About.” So many people have taken credit for this over the years we are not sure who it truly was constructed by.

Suffice it to say, it is not ours but we really, really like it.

What Life Is About

Life isn’t about keeping score.
It’s not about how many friends you have
Or how accepted you are.
Not about if you have plans this weekend
or if you’re alone.
It isn’t about who you’re dating, who you used to date,
how many people you’ve dated,
or if you haven’t been with anyone at all.
It isn’t about who you have kissed,
It’s not about sex.
It isn’t about who your family is
or how much money they have
Or what kind of car you drive.
Or where you are sent to school.
It’s not about how beautiful or ugly you are.
Or what clothes you wear, what shoes you have on,
or what kind of music you listen to.
It’s not about if your hair is blonde,
red, black, or brown.
Or if your skin is too light or too dark.
Not about what grades you get, how smart you are,
how smart everybody else thinks you are,
or how smart standardized tests say you are.
It’s not about what clubs you’re in
or how good you are at your sport.
It’s not about representing your whole being on a piece
of paper and seeing who will accept the written you.

Life just isn’t those things

Life is about who you love and who you hurt.
It’s about who you make happy or unhappy purposefully.
It’s about keeping or betraying trust.
It’s about friendship, used as a sanctity or a weapon.
It’s about what you say and mean,
maybe hurtful, maybe heartening.
About starting rumors and contributing to petty gossip.
It’s about what judgments you pass and why.
And who your judgments are spread to.
It’s about who you’ve ignored
with full control and intention.
It’s about jealousy, fear, ignorance, and revenge.
It’s about carrying inner hate and love,
letting it grow, and spreading it.

But most of all, it’s about using Your Life to touch
or poison other people’s hearts in such a way
that it could have never occurred alone.
You, and only you,
choose the way those hearts are affected,
and those choices are what life’s all about.