Passion. Enthusiasm. Joie de vivre.
With the untimely passing of Tim Russert last week came an outpouring of love and rightly so. While I was glued to the television like most Americans, I had an insatiable appetite to learn about his successful career and happy life. After all, how refreshing was it to watch someone create their own brand, be authentic with their own self, not go for the Jerry Springer type ratings but rather, invoke a sense of intellectualism on the job.
His broad smile his passion for the job seemed contagious and here's the thing: from the clips I saw he seemed to truly embody what it means to live each day to the fullest. With passion. With integrity.
He seemed "real" and therein would explain how I found out about his death: several of my friends updated their facebook status to indicate they were terribly sad about his passing. While I was immediately shocked and saddened I can't imagine my friends nor myself doing this if let's say it was Peter Jennings a while ago. We didn't seem to have a connection to him but rather, Tim feels like one of us.
The underdog.
The guy with whom you could catch a baseball game, the guy who would seem to treat the janitor with the same respect as the CEO or in this case, senator, presidential candidate or heck, even president.
I honestly never truly watched Meet the Press, however sometimes I'd put it on the tv for background noise if I was actually awake that early on a Sunday (yes, I know it's 10:30 am but with NYC time it equates to 7 am everywhere else!) so of course we know he's no longer with us and his funeral invoked attendance from the highest offices of our government - past and present - watching this morning with substitute Brian Williams just seemed, of course, there was something missing. Someone special.
As I watched the footage last week and was amazed by his intellect and questions he asked candidates years ago to only emerge as they befuddled their words and retracted promises, you know what? We could all learn a thing or two from our "friend" Tim who must of us like yours truly never even met.
He lived with integrity. I'd simply assume that he jumped out of bed every the morning to prepare for the Sunday broadcast - shouldn't we all feel this way - how lucky we truly are? How blessed we are in this life?
