Wish that I were as intelligent as Bill Gates. But like most humans, I do not share his acumen, the enviable and financially rewarding inclination toward mathematics, science, computer science and computer programming. He reportedly reads 30 books a month. He was a Harvard University drop out. He was a teen-age geek. And like all geniuses God blesses upon our planet from time to time, at a very young age Gates could see the future: Every home would have a computer, not a clunky metal box the size of a closet but something resembling a typewriter. And lo his vision became our shared reality, by the 1980s and each year with tremendous improvements to today’s light-weight laptops and pads, not numbering one per home but several for each family member even little ones. Foresightedness is a gift, and a highly intelligent human being knows exactly how and when to use it.
Today at age 64, Gates, the co-creator of Microsoft, is worth $96.3 billion. Throughout his lifetime, he’s often been listed as the richest man in the world. But now he has fully separated himself from his tech biz to concentrate on far more important matters to billions of people living in poverty. Bill and his wife, Melinda, formed an international nonprofit specifically to aid the plight of the poor in the world. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation formed 20 years ago, according to the website, to “eradicate disease, poverty and hunger globally.” The motto is: All Lives Have Equal Value, and the nonprofit’s premise: We are impatient optimists working to reduce inequality.
Americans don’t really see a lot of truly poor and destitute people especially children. But the well-traveled Gates’ family has: masses of humanity living in deplorable and inhumane conditions in Africa, India, Asia, South America and many other neglected places on the planet. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent billions of dollars to reduce infectious and chronic diseases in the world, most fates unknown to Americans and the fortunate First World inhabitants. The couple is to be applauded, too, for seeking ways to improve America’s public schools. Education is the key to a bright future individually and nationally, and no one realizes that more than Bill Gates. His parents afforded him a good education, but they also understood his genius. He was not like other kids. He was way too smart, operating in the stratosphere, existing in another realm, so smart that he took to building electronics and computers in the family garage. A genius like his was bound to get noticed and financial backing when the right idea came along.
As a young wealthy businessman, Gates came across as uncomfortable in the public. He gave few interviews, seemed quiet, affable but studious. He was driven, could be argumentative, and indeed had few friends who could match his level of super intelligence. Perhaps he was so intent on making Microsoft a national name and international product, a worldwide necessity, because he was a bit lonely. Genius is hard for us regular earthlings to understand. We’re prone to be jealous: Why’s he so smart (instead of me)?
Even as one of the world’s wealthiest men, for years the wealthiest bachelor on the planet, Gates was not known to date much. He married later than most but picked quite a mate. Gates has said fatherhood taught him unexpected lessons, softened him when he wanted to teach his kids how to be fierce and shrewd in business and in life. That was his formula for success. But he learned to be human raising kids. Business competition, nose to the grindstone, seriousness and watching who’s ahead of whom no longer mattered as much as it did during his young adult years. Those heady traits and tools to success and money mean absolutely nothing to babies and little kids. He learned a new perspective in life: What really matters is life itself. The Gates’ children are now adults. In recent years Bill and Melinda signed The Giving Pledge and have been joined by several of the world’s billionaires called upon by mega-billionaire Warren Buffet to leave more than half of their wealth to charity, even 99 percent of it.
Gates was always aware of his privilege. He’s been a smart businessman, won and lost along the way, and now has completely severed himself from the company he founded. No longer content to sit on the board, Gates is growing into another dimension of those who have lived the good life. Not quite yet the elderly senior statesman, still with a lot of energy and vigor to work and accomplish monumental goals, he intends to be in the front lines of improving life on earth. Portable toilets and vaccines readily available worldwide are just a couple of sanitary and disease-combating accomplishments Gates is ensuring all humanity has access.
So in our current state of coronavirus fear, the human masses, at least in America, have shown themselves to be the opposite of benevolent. Those who hoard toilet paper, sanitizer and food are not fooling anyone with the excuse of providing for their family. There are countries in this world whose people do not use toilet paper or if they do use considerably less than Americans … for some reason. Have we forgotten our own grandparents and great-grandparents didn’t use toilet paper either along with indoor toilets and all the mid-20th century sanitation we take for granted and can’t comprehend any other way when it comes to ‘doing what comes naturally?’ Shame on the hoarders, Americans who cannot deal with uncertainty. They’d never make it in the Third World or the world of our not-so-distant ancestors.
In this digital Information Age, the very era Gates had a starring role, there exists the critical masses, the cynics, the non-fans, the ever-suspicious of the wealthy. Someone like Bill Gates is far removed from his detractors, the majority of Americans who never will equate his financial success and revolutionary creations, his ideas that catapulted everyone on the planet ready or not into the digital age. Gates is not like us regular people, easy to envy and anger and give up on presumed pipe dreams. As certain as he was in the 1970s that everyone in the future would have a home computer, he knows that the misery of world poverty—the unsanitary living conditions, disease and starvation—can and will be solved. Today Bill Gates has nothing but time on his hands coupled with 100 percent mental focus, not unlike the days of his youth when he was more like you and me yet destined for greatness, sparkling with imagination and innovation.