At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs,
CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see
the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself.
Applause.
Thank You.
I am honored to be with you today for your commencement from
one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated
from college & this is the closest I have ever got into a college
graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life, that’s it, no
big deal, just three stories. The first story is about the Connecting the dots,
I dropped out of my college after the first six months but then stayed around
as a drop in for around 18 months or so before I really quit. So why that I
drop out. It started before I born. My biological mother was young under
graduate student and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very
strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates. So everything was all
set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except when I
popped up they decided at the last minute they really wanted me to grow. So my
parents who were in the waiting list got a call in the middle of the night
asking we got an unexpected baby boy, do you want him, they said, off course.
My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college
and my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the
final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised
that I would go to college. This was the start in my life. And seventeen years
later I did go to college. But I evenly chose a college it was almost as
expensive as Stanford and all of my working class parents savings would be
spent on my college tuition. After Six months I couldn’t see the value in it. I
had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and had no idea howhttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6689153711939325423#editor/target=post;postID=4066143545181666300;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=6;src=link college was
going to help me to figure it out. And here I spending all the money my parents
have saved in their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust it would
all work out okay. It was pretty scary at that time. But looking back it was
one of the best decision I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop
taking required classes they didn’t interest me and begin dropping in once that
looked far more interesting. It wasn’t all romantic I didn’t have a drawn room
so slept on floor in my friend’s rooms. I returned coke bottles for the five
cent deposits to buy food with. And I would walk 7 miles across the town on
every Sunday night to get one good meal in the week at the Hari Krishna Temple.
I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into, by following my curiosity and
intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example, reed college of that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in
the country. Through out the campus, every poster, every label on every drawer
was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to
take normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do
this. I learned about serif and sensor of tight phases and about varying the
amount space between different letter combinations and about what makes great
typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically settled in a way
that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of these had even a
hope of a practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were
designing the first Mackintosh Computer it all came back to me and we designed
it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I
never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had
multiple type phases or proportionately spaced fonts. And since windows just copied the Mac its
likely no personal computer would have done. (Applause) If I had never dropped
out I would have never dropped in that calligraphy class. Personal computers
might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Off course it was
impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college but it was
very very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only
connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust the dots would somehow
connecting your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life,
karma whatever. Because believing that dots would connect down the road will
give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it lead you off the
path. And that would make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky I found
what I loved to do, early in life. Wasn’t I started apple in my parents garage,
when I was 20. We worked hard and in ten years apple had grown from just two of
us in our garage into a $ 2 billion company with over four thousand employees.
We just released our finest creation “The Mackintosh” a year earlier and I
turned thirty. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you
started. Well as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented
to run a company with me and in the first year or so the things went well. But
the runner vision for future begin to diverge. And eventually we had a falling
out. When we did our board of directors sided with him. So at thirty I was out
and very publically out. With that the focus of my entire adult life was gone
and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for few months. I felt
that I let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, I dropped the
pathogen that was passed to me. I met with David Packard at Bob Noise and tried
to apologies for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even
thought of running away from the valley. But something slowly begun to dawn on
me. I still loved what I did. I been rejected but I was still in love. So I
decided to start over. I didn’t see at then but turned to getting fired from
Apple was the best thing that could ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. Lets sure
about everything. It freed be from one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years I started a company named next, another company name
Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my Wife. Pixar
one hand created the first computer animated feature film toy story, and now
the most successful animation studio in the world. (Applause) In the remarkable
turn of events Apple bought Next, and I returned to Apple and the technology we
developed in the Next is at the Heart of Apples current renascence. And we had
a wonderful family together. I am pretty sure none of this wouldn’t have
happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine but I
guess the patient needed it. Sometimes
life going to hit you on head with a brick, don’t lose faith. I am convince
with only one thing which kept me going that was I loved what I did, you have
got to find what you love. And that is
as true as for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of
your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is a
great work. And the only way to do a great work is to love what you do. If you
haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. As all matters of your
heart you will know when you find it. And like any great relationships its gets
better and better as years roll on. So
keep looking, don’t settle.
(Applause)
My third story is about death, when I was seventeen I read a
quote something like, “if you live each day as if it was your last someday you
are almost certainly be right.” It made an impression on me and since then past
33 years I looked at the mirror every morning and ask myself if today were the
last day of my life what I want to do what I am about to do today. And whenever the answer is been no for too
many days in a row I know I need to change something. Remembering that I will
be dead soon is the most important tool I have ever encountered to help me make
big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all
pride, fear of embarrassment of failure, these things just fall away in the
face of death. Living only what is truly important. Remembering you are going
to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something
to loose. 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 7:30 in the
morning. It clearly showed tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a
pancreas was. The doctors told me this was certainly type of cancer which is
incurable and I should expect to live no longer then three to six months. My
doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order. Which is doctors code
for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything, you thought
you have the next ten years to tell them it was just few months. It means to
make sure everything is buttoned up so it would be as easy as possible for your
family. It means to say you good bye. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy with a
stuck of endoscope on my throat through my stomach into my intestine put a
needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but
my wife who was there told me that when they view the cells under microscope,
the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of
Pancreatic Cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and
thankfully I am fine now.
Applause
This was the closest I have been facing to the death and I
hope it’s the closest I get for few more decades. Having lived through it I can
now say this to you with bit more certainty that when death was a useful and
purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people want to go to
heaven don’t want to die to get there and yeah death is the destination we all
share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is it should be because death is
very likely the single best invention of life. Its life change agent. Its clears
out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you. But someday not
too long from now you would gradually become old and be cleared away. Sorry to
be so dramatic but its quite true. Your time is limited so don’t waste it
living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by the dogma which is living with
the results of other peoples thinking. Don’t let the noise of others opinion ground
out in your own inner voice. And the most important have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to
become. Everything else is secondary.
Applause.
Taking few sips of water.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication, called
the whole earth catalog. Which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
created by a fellow named Stuart Bryant not far from here at Mellow Park. And
he brought it to life with a poetic touch. This was in the late sixties before
personal computers and desktop publishing. So it all made with Typewriters
scissors and pilloried cameras. It was a sort of Google and paper back form
thirty five years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with
great notions. Stuart and team put up several issues of whole earth catalog and
then they put out of with the final issue. It was the mid nineteen seventies
and I was your age. On back cover of their final issue there was a photograph
of an early morning country road. The kind you might find yourself hitchhiking
on if you are so adventures. Beneath it were the words Stay Hungry Stay
Foolish. It was their farewell message before they signed off. Stay Hungry Stay
Foolish. And I have always wish that for myself. And now and you graduate to
begin a new I wish that for you. Stay hungry Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
A well deserving stand up ovation by the students. (verbatim)
