Jonathan Traeger, prominent television producer for ESPN, died last night from complications of losing his soul mate and his fiancee. He was 35 years old.
Soft-spoken and obsessive, Traeger never looked the part of a hopeless romantic. But in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. This hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the Agatha Christie-like pursuit for his long reputed soul mate, a woman whom he only spent a few precious hours with. Sadly, the protracted search ended late Saturday night in complete and utter failure.
Yet even in certain defeat, the courageous Traeger secretly clung to the belief that life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences, uh-uh. But rather, it is a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. Asked about the loss of his dear friend, Dean Kansky, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and executive editor of the New York Times, described Jonathan as a changed man in the last days of his life. “Things were clearer for him,” Kansky noted. “Ultimately Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call “fatum”, and what we currently refer to as destiny.”
