Jean Fahmy

This blog space is usually reserved for entrepreneurial posts, experiences and knowledge. But today is going to be different. It will be a reflexion on Geddo (grandpa in arab).

Geddo is 92 years young. He's lived 2 World Wars and participated with Egypt in the second one, under the English.  He has intense diabetes, is quite overweight, smoked a good part of his life, had a couple of heart-attacks, through-the-roof cholesterol and a weak liver to boot. Theta (grandma in arab) passed on over 20 years ago, so he moved to Canada from Egypt so that my parents could take care of him. So for over 20 years, he was dependent on others.

In short, he's had every valid reason to NOT be alive today. His body and his heart were broken - and that alone would have done in the best of . But his spirit, ahhh his spirit...

Many clichés could describe his spirit:
- Live and let live
- Don't worry, be happy
- Irie (Jamaican)
- Hakuna Matata (Lion King)
- Ké sera, sera
- Finding the silver lining
- Eh, whatareyagonnadoaboutit
- (insert own phrase here)

He was the epitome of selective worrying. He understood there were things we could do to change the world around us, but that there was much more we couldn't do - so why eat ourselves up over it ? He understood his limitations, accepted them, and made the best of the cards he was dealt. He always had a smile and I think he wasn't apprehensive of passing on.

I am writing this post now (and I have deliberately changed the verb tense in the last paragraph) because last week, his heart-attack put him in the emergency ward at the local hospital. He was barely able to speak and stay awake, yet he would still smile and ask me about my wife and kids. And today, I got a call from my mom that he entered a semi-comatose state. I am unsure if he will be able to hear us or not, but I do know he is at peace. He was content with what he was and what he had during his life, so my biased grandson mind tells me he must be content now.

Maybe this is a post about entrepreneurship after all. Learning to take the events of startup life (and life in general) in stride is an important take away from this man's example. Kinda brings me back to the famous Serenity Prayer (1942) and it's most popular variant:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Update: On Nov 8th 2008, he left us for a better place. He kept going a full 11 months after the posted heart-attack. I am happy to say that, while concious, he kept his positive outlook on life and will forever be an example of finding the silver lining in some very dark clouds.

R.I.P. Geddo. You deserve it.

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