Gatsby and Bill Gates

"And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter....tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning.....

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Francis Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby 

Let´s highlight this one: 

(...) He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. (...)

This is a lovely line in a superb fragment, the most lovely ending of a book. So much so that Bill Gates engraved this very line ("He had come a long way...), on the ceiling of the library of his magnificent 100 million dollar home!

Obviously Gates liked The Great Gatsby, and loved this fragment, but it feels as if he did not quite grasp the true meaning of the line, or at least its most obvious meaning. Or did he? Maybe it is just that a book has a life of its own, and interpretations are absolutely free, each one adapting it into his or her peculiar circumstance: a book is a set of symbols, a code each individual understands his/her way. Yes, that is. 

Or also it could well be that Bill Gates wanted to let us know that...he did not actually reach his dream, this having been passed by just the moment it seemed so much within his reach?. Perhaps his identification with Gatsby was such that he decided to engrave in the ceiling of his dream house the futility of all human dreams? 

Hell, no. The phrase "He did not know that it was already behind him" was not included in the ceiling engraving.