Issue #26, September 22, 2006

Twentysomething…

By David Lion Rattiner

Steve Irwin
I try to be funny when I write this column because I get a kick out of some of the ridiculous things that I notice in my life on a weekly basis. However, this week, I have to get off my chest my feelings about The Crocodile Hunter’s death and how the news has shaken me. I’m still not over Steve Irwin’s passing. The crocodile trapping and wrestling Aussie, who had a show on Animal Planet called the “The Crocodile Hunter,” has somehow really touched my soul. It is just so sad that he died.

I was never really much of a fan of the show, but when I did see that it was on, I would watch it and just marvel at Irwin’s enthusiasm about animals, conservation and nature. It’s weird how quickly you respect somebody when they are completely themselves on camera. Steve Irwin was nobody else except himself and in today’s world, that is rare. If this guy ran for president, I would have voted for him.

Last week I was watching the tribute that the Animal Planet did for Steve Irwin in between innings of the Red Sox -Yankees games and I was almost brought to tears by what people were saying about him. I saw tapes of him talking with great interest about his love for his father, his daughter, his wife and the tragic loss of his mother. I couldn’t stop thinking about how good of a person this guy was and how perplexed I was that he had been killed while filming a documentary about underwater animals.

What really has amazed me is how emotional I and many other people I know have been feeling about losing Steve Irwin. It’s almost as if an innocence to our personalities has been lost. It also makes us feel more vulnerable in a way. Even though just the title “crocodile hunter” immediately sends danger signals off in our heads and even though when we watched Steve on television we would say to ourselves, “This guy is out of his mind,” we never for one second believed that it was possible for somebody like him to be killed in such a way. It was like he was invincible to these kinds of things in some way. You could see in his eyes that he was aware of what he was doing and that he was confident that he could handle it.

I really feel that a lot can be learned from Steve Irwin and I’m not talking about animal conservation or statistics about crocodiles. I’m talking about the way he lived and how he treated people. I think that if Steve never landed a hit television show that he would have been the exact same person that he was and still would have brought happiness to people all around him. I think that if more of us acted on our passions and not our ambitions, the world would be a much better place. I think that Steve Irwin had the secret to happiness in life and I have never seen it more clearly in a person than him.

So what do we have to say about a guy like Steve Irwin? Well, for one, you are doing yourself and the people around you a favor when you approach life in the way that he approached life. All you have to do is watch thirty seconds of him on television and you will see what I am talking about.

You can also learn from Steve the importance of living life to the fullest and to really experience it, not just mope along through it. And of course, you can learn from him the importance of conservation and the natural beauty of the earth. All of this can be learned from a guy that made a living jumping on fifteen-foot long crocodiles.

As strange as it sounds, I can tell you that the memory of Steve Irwin will forever be in the back of my mind as somebody that I will strive to be like and that I will always admire. I think that his passing is tragic, but it is also a strong reminder of how important it is to pay attention to how you live your own life.