Saturday, 6 October 2012

Three stories of my life': Steve Jobs

This is a commencement address to the graduates of Stanford University by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation on June 12, 2005.

1. The first story is about connecting the dots. 

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months... Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class... Ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. And since Windows just copied the Mac... If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do... You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

2. My second story is about love and loss. 

I got fired [from Apple]. During the next 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 world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. Apple bought NeXT, I returned 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 together. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It awful tasted medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. You’ve got to find what you love. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

3. My third story is about death. 

I was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type that is incurable. [Later] I had surgery and I’m fine now. No one wants to die. And yet death is the destination we all share. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. On the back cover of their final issue were the words: “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 very much.

A Tribute from : Daryn weatherman

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