I came across by chance in this speech (translated) held by Steve Jobs at Stanford University invited to give the commencement address to the newly graduates. I would like everyone to read it. The final chapter, on an issue now completely ignored and despised, it's beautiful.
If today someone had the courage to give examples of how these things might change a bit'...[...]
Steve Jobs invited to give the commencement address at Stanford University.
The speech is divided into three parts.
PART I
am honored to be here with you today at your commencement from one of the best universities in the world. I did not ever graduate. Indeed, to say the truth, this is the closest thing to a degree that I've ever gotten. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it, nothing exceptional: only three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first half, but then I continued to attend so for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
E 'started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, and made sure everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. But when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So then those who have become my parents, who were on the waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "Is there a baby boy, not provided. Do you want him?" They said: "Certainly." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never finished high school. He refused to sign the final papers adoption. Then he relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
Seventeen years later I went to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all the savings of my parents ended up paying me for the tuition. After six months, I could not see any real opportunities. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and how college could help me understand. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire working life. So I decided to drop out and trust that everything would be fine. It was very scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute that I let go out I could stop taking the courses that did not interest me and begin to occur in classes that I found most interesting.
It was not all rosy, though. I did not have a dorm room, and I slept on the floor of the chambers of my friends. Earned money to the seller bringing the empty bottles of Coca Cola for five cents deposits to buy food. Once a week, on Sunday evening, I walked for seven miles across town to finally have a good meal at the Hare Krishna temple, the only one of the week. But all what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and my intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you an example.
: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was hand written with beautiful calligraphy. Because I had dropped the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about the difference between the spaces that separate the different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great text. It was wonderful, in a way that science can offer, because it was artistic, beautiful, historic and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But then, ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And it all into the Mac and 'was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped out of college and then I had not in on that single course, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or the possibility of proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it is likely that there would be any personal computer with those capabilities. If I had not dropped out of college, I could never in on this calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Certainly at the time when I was in college it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward. But it became very, very clear ten years later, when I could look back.
Again, you can not connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that somehow, in the future, the dots will. You must believe in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This type of approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. PART II
My second story is about love and loss
I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in my life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20 years. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from a company with two of us in a garage into a two billion dollar company with over four thousand employees. The year before we had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - and I had just turned 30, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, when Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year things went very well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with his party. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating thing.
I did not know really what to do for a few months. I felt like I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs to me - as if I had dropped the baton was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. It was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from Silicon Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed a bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
not I realized then, but the fact of having been fired from Apple was the best thing that could happen. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me allowing me to enter one of the more creatvi of my life.
During the five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family.
'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I had not been fired from Apple. E 'was awful tasting medicine, but I think it was necessary for the patient. Sometimes life hits you like a brick on his head. Do not lose faith, though. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going was the love for what I did. You have to find what you love. And this applies to your work as it is for your lovers. Your work will fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do a good job is to love what you do. If you still have not found it yet, keep looking. Do not settle. With all my heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better hand to as the years go by. So keep looking until you find it. Do not settle.
PART III (FINAL)
My third story is about death
When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it were the last, surely one When you are right. " Impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked: "If today were the last day of my life, I do what I am about to do today?". And whenever the answer is "no" for too many days in a row, I understand that something must be changed.
Remember that I will die soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations of eternity, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remember that we die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at seven-thirty in the morning, and it showed clearly a tumor on my pancreas. I did not know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me that it was a cancer that was incurable and almost certainly the type that would have been better if I put my affairs in order (which is the code to tell the doctors prepare to die). It means to tell your kids in a few months everything you thought you'd have ten years to tell them. This means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that your family is as simple as possible. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, which is the result stuck an endoscope down my throat, through the stomach and into intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few of my cancer cells. I was sedated but my wife - who was there - I said that when doctors have viewed the cells under the microscope started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer, curable with surgery . I had the surgery and I'm fine.
This was the time when I went closer to death and I hope its the closest for decades. Having lived through it I can now say with a little 'more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept say:
Nobody wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven do not want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all have in common. No one has ever escaped it. It is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. And 'Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Now the new is you, but someday not too far away gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's true.
Your time is limited, so do not waste it living life someone else. Do not be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Do not let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important of all, have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. E 'was created by Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and Stewart has brought it to life with his poetic touch. It 'was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It 'was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before there was Google: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions concepts.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and when they arrived at the end of their journey, a final issue. It was more or less half of the seventies and I was your age. On the last page of the final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind of street where you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. "'re Hungry, stay foolish. It was their farewell message. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all.
0 comments:
Post a Comment