For this story, I’d like to portray the totality of Marvin, not as a mathematician, but as a unique and beautiful human being. He was a quiet but jovial man whose heart was as big as the sky and had an appetite for life that matched. He once taught a course at a UC campus, well outside of his mathematical comfort zone, called “The Road to Enlightenment.” Why would he ever do this? Because he was personally acquainted with Krishnamurti, Fritz Perls, Dick Price (the founder of Esalen) and Werner Erhard. He had not only studied under the legendary Alan Watts... and noted that he dated his daughter. He spent two years living at a Buddhist retreat to study Vipassana. He quietly trained as an hypnotherapist because he found it interesting, and was even certified as a therapeutic hypnotist, but was too humble to ever offer treatment to others. He had traveled the world. He had loved many women. He had much to teach, but far too humble to ever consider himself a teacher of anything but mathematics.
Years ago, when we were new friends, he told me that he had met one of my spiritual teachers for dinner in Chinatown. Standing in front of a row of tanks of fresh fish, packed tightly and waiting to become meals, this Taoist master remarked to Marvin, “Although we believe ourselves to be free, in reality most of us can only move a few inches.” Marvin told me that this shook him to the core, and he immediately bought a ticket to go explore South America the following week.
After he returned from the trip, he confided in me that it was actually a challenge for him to do things like travel, because he was fearful. He was afraid to travel and and afraid of change. He was afraid to love and be loved fully. He was anxious about being an inadequate father, as he deeply adored his son David. Most of all, he was afraid of depression. When I went on a trip to the Far East, I brought back a chachka for his desk, a miniature replica of a martial arts weapon set, to give him as a gift. I gave him a Chinese name, Wu Pai, without fear. He wrote it down lovingly and kept it on his desk for years.
I suppose that the unspoken reality about Marvin is that he had bravely and successfully fought depression most of his life. His apparent jovialness was really a veneer that covered over a chronic depression that was so profound he would spend days or weeks in his bathrobe, not leaving the house, telling people he was working on a difficult math problem, but secretly fighting off suicidal thoughts. He had a truly powerful mind, but when it sank into depressive rumination, that power worked against him.
But it should be noted that Marvin’s greatest achievement was managing to overcome his fears and depression. He fought through these negative thoughts barehanded, and to some measure defeated despair and hopelessness in his life. I believe he did so by following his bliss, by focusing on what really matters and by appreciating what is beautiful in life. As a result, he ended up traveling the world and recovering from the heartbreak of a failed marriage to find a modicum of love in a cold and complex world.
One more memory to share... it was over 30 years ago, and Marvin came to visit me in San Diego, where I was living. It’s one of my earliest memories of him, we were returning from dinner and I was about unlock my apartment door. Marvin pointed briefly at the apartment number, which was number 181, and he smiled enigmatically and then quickly dismissed the gesture. I said what is it? He murmured oh nothing demurely. I pressed him and he finally relented, proudly, “181! That’s my IQ!” Wow. Marvin Jay was clearly a genius, but I assure you, he never felt entitled or superior as a result of this. He treated all people with dignity and respect. And as a true genius, he should be afforded some license for eccentricity in his later years.
In the end, the Marvin I will remember is the man who allowed friends to live in his home to get through life transitions... a divorce, a move, a change of careers. I started a video game company in his garage that later took off like a rocket. Another transitioned to a career as a professor. A third launched a major non-profit organization. What we all had in common was that he allowed us each nine months to get things over the hump — the gestation period of a human being, so that we could be reborn. It was his unique approach to philanthropy. That is the essence of who Marvin Jay Greenberg was — a true friend, loyal to a fault, and a perfect compatriot in the exploration of the non-Euclidean geometry of love.
