The inventor of the geodesic dome—a structure light enough to be lifted by a helicopter yet strong enough to withstand hurricanes—achieved his eventual acclaim by never breaking a bargain he made with himself in 1927 as he teetered at the edge of suicide. A series of business failures, compounded with lingering grief over the death of his daughter five years earlier, had made Fuller increasingly despondent. Then he was fired from his job as president of a construction company he had founded with his father-in-law, and a second daughter was born. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, he felt he must get himself out of the way, ensuring that relatives would take care of his wife and their baby.

He went to Lake Michigan, intending to swim out to his death. Then he was struck by what he called a vision, in which he saw that he didn’t have the right to do away with himself. “You do not belong to you, you belong to the universe,” he was later to explain; for all his mistakes, he was the custodian of a unique package of experiences that just might have some utility for mankind. He would trust the “anticipatory intellectual wisdom which we may call God” and allow himself to live, and he would never forget that he was a “throwaway.”

Thus began the fifty-six-year experiment of “guinea pig B”—for Bucky—in which “an average healthy human being” resolved to become a problem solver “on behalf of all humanity.” One can only imagine the reactions of family and friends when the thirty-twoyear-old Fuller announced this. He further determined to dispense forever with the idea of “earning a living,” which to him meant advantaging oneself at the expense of others; if he concentrated on doing what needed to be done, funding would take care of itself. He decided to devote himself, broadly, to the technology of “livingry,” as opposed to weaponry.

Fuller moved his wife, Anne, and infant daughter, Allegra, to a one-room apartment in a Chicago slum, withdrew completely from all friends and social contact, and vowed not to speak again until he really knew what he thought. And then he began to think. His virtual silence lasted for almost two years and was the beginning of what he one day called “a blind date with principle.”

There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. Human beings come into this world to do particular work. That work is their purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you forget everything else and not this, there's nothing to worry about. If you remember everything else and forget your true work, then you will have done nothing with your life.

- Jelalludin Rumi, from "The One Thing You Must Do",
The Soul of Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks