Four months ago, I was pissed off with Phil Butler, a man I had known and respected for years. He had written an article publicly criticizing me and I, displaying that wonderful emotional maturity I continue to demonstrate well into my forties, reacted as though he had desecrated the sacred temple of my ego, turning an exchange of opinions into a small-scale Balkan war fought over email.
Then I picked up the phone.
We talked for almost two hours, and that curious thing happened that sometimes happens when a voice replaces a screen and the human being on the other end suddenly becomes three-dimensional again: the anger lost its grip, our disagreements shrank back to their actual proportions, and we ended up laughing. By the time I hung up, I could barely remember why I had been so furious in the first place.
Today, I learned that Phil had died.
During those two hours, I had been talking to him about my bruised little ego while he was fighting a far more serious battle, one I knew absolutely nothing about. That disproportion keeps coming back to me, because we spend a ridiculous amount of our lives defending opinions, reputations, posts, articles, and tiny digital territories like miniature Napoleons with LinkedIn Premium, forgetting that there is a real person on the other side of the screen whose life may be infinitely more complicated than the last email they sent us.
Phil was brilliant, uncompromising, often miles away from my own views and, precisely because of that, invaluable. In my early years as a writer, he was also something of a mentor. Knowing he will no longer be there to tell me when, in his opinion, I’m talking bullshit leaves a silence that feels particularly heavy today.
Epicurus wrote that death, the most terrifying of evils, is nothing to us.
Perhaps.
All I know is that I am immensely grateful I made that phone call, and that our last conversation ended with laughter.
Rest in peace, Phil.
Until next week, best wishes from Simone.
SIMONE PUORTO
