Today’s Letter — Warren Buffett
Hello Warren,
I can call you Warren, I hope. I also hope that this note reaches you, which I understand, is a long shot. This is the first of what I intend to be daily letters to philanthropists in America who, I hope, agree with the mission of my non-profit, AdvanceAbilities inc. enough to make even a modest investment in our future.
By most accepted measures, I am a disabled senior living in America. This, however, is not about me. I only mention my situation to indicate my intimate knowledge of the problems I wish to address. Too often, disabled seniors, especially the low income variety, are automatically labelled as ‘defective’, ‘feeble minded’, ‘uninspired’, ‘a burden’, and many other unfair appellations. I was an executive in a software company focused on AI based search and machine learning when I fell ill and was no longer able to work full time. 85+ operations later, and no longer the athlete I had been all my life, I use a rollator to allow me to walk. I have been told countless times that after ‘this operation’ that I would no longer be able to walk. Well…. I attempted to re-enter the workforce at our county health department, and was offered 2 different senior positions by my would be bosses, but an arcane HR system geared to hire only those who had recently been working — regardless of one’s talents and expertise, blocked my hire both times. So, as a volunteer, for one and one half years, I worked in several different roles where every one of my peers was shocked to hear that I was a volunteer. I needed to build some recent experience, so I did.
I have lived in a building built expressly to house and support disabled seniors of lower income for 8 years. When I was forced to slow down and actually notice what was going on all around me, I was shocked, heartbroken, and inspired to start my company and dream, AdvanceAbilities. I was as guilty as the next person of avoiding the acknowledgement of how mistreated and misjudged many disabled seniors are in America. Having lived in the UK and worked in many of the Western European nations as a software consultant, I became painfully aware of how integrated older people are into the fabric of life in those nations. I felt ashamed to be an American — for a second that is, until I stored that observation in the nether reaches of my brain. Then I was off being good ol Jim from the states, Bodybuilder, consultant, and willing to help whenever needed. It is amazing how well our mind can put things into storage and pretend that they simply don’t exist. Remember Reaganomics?That worked for me until I was forced to slow down, and pay attention.
I have watched as several of my neighbors have simply lost any of the bounce or energy they had prior to moving into our building. We all had great hope of this being a truly game changing community of disabled seniors who certainly didn’t let their assorted issues get them down. That was then, now, however, the personal decay among my neighbors is palpable. What is amazing to me is that they all worry about MY health. Granted, they see me vanish for weeks at a time — or with a PICC line dangling from my arm — a lot, but I have gotten used to doing what I need to do to bounce back. What puzzles me is why don’t the families who are local, for the most part, or case workers ever visit these folks. Many of my neighbors are from the Ukraine, and their families brought them over here, most, never visit. When a life partner passes away, this building, funded to receive special social services including help in community building, does not allow any sort of memorial service. The surviving partner usually retreats into oblivion unless we seek them out, but the people that should be there like family, rarely know that something has happened. We as a nation, have gotten so used to warehousing and avoiding thought of these people, my peers, it blows me away. I am lucky that I had the amazing education and employment opportunities that good education and chutzpah gave me. I hear story after story about loneliness and despair and the people and services tasked with helping are nowhere to be found. It never ceases to amaze me how we can convince ourselves of things like ‘oh, he/she is disabled, those people don’t really feel the same things we do.’ Or ‘I swear, those people are so needy’.
My solution for this situation is to use the old saying in Management Consulting: uncover, discover, discard with a few small changes. Uncover, discover, Tell everyone, and change things. We are going to take an annual trip around our nation, and hold prearranged recorded interviews with disabled seniors of all sorts and let them tell us what their life is like, what barriers they face, what their dreams are, and if they use an assistive device, whether or not if serves them well and how it could be better. Both our daily webcast and the documentary series we produce will make it impossible to ignore these issues any longer. I am working with the head designer at what is generally regarded as the finest car and product design school in the nation to teach a class of graduate design students about design for the greater good. Having seen their work, I am immensely grateful to have this opportunity as we intend to design a new generation of devices that are inline with users needs, not manufacturer’s convenience.
As you know — all of this takes money. Our biggest need is a bus. Perhaps a used tour bus from a band that no longer uses it or an RV that sits in a driveway unused. I’ll work with whatever. We have manufacturers lined up to build the best, most inventive assistive technology into our rolling showroom so that people in Appalachia and the south that would never have an opportunity to see what is available to help them have a new world of opportunities to make their lives better.
I have no idea if you will ever see my note, but nothing ventured — nothing gained. I’d love a chance to discuss this with you.
Sincerely,
Jim Chud
