Our house was obviously shook up by the news of Steve Jobs passing away last week. We are a completely Apple-driven house; are long-time admirers of pretty much everything Apple produces; and every member of the family has a well-loved favorite Pixar movie (I think it is a different film for each of us, too!). The loss of such an innovative man, well it is just that…a true loss to the world.
J. made me watch the commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave in 2005 to Stanford graduates. If you have a few minutes, give it a watch. It is incredibly moving and inspirational. (If you can’t watch the video, but want to read the speech you can do so here.)
Kinda makes me want to be like Steve when I grow up.
And then today in church, during his homily Father Gary quoted Steve Job – from that speech.
“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. 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 not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. ..Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
I’ve said goodbye to two friends in the past two months. It is fascinating to me that both of them did exactly what Steve Jobs advised – they didn’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Another not-so-gentle reminder, perhaps.
RIP Steve Jobs.
I thought the exact same thing when I watched this video last week. He was an amazing man the took advantage of whatever life handed him. Myself, the part of it that really hit me was when he was talking finding out he was going to die and him saying “if today was my last day, is this how I would want to spend it. If the answer was “no” too many days in a row it was time for a change”. He’s so right.
I recently watched ‘Revenge of the Nerds’. Thank you for this opportunity to see what he became.