I’m feeling a little inspired today. As you may or may not
know, I’m a techie. Not in the nerdy or geeky sorta way; but the girlish type
:D :D . The type that doesn’t care much about E!. Should I even be using that as a yard stick? I guess not;
anyway, that’s not the point of this post but you’ll see the connection (I
hope).
There are very few people-living or dead- that I can boldly
come out and say I admire or that inspire me. This is because I’m not very
heavy on words. If you say something nice to me, I might surprise you and give
you a blank stare *sorry*. That’s why I’m terrible at “washing people” Bad behaviour?
I know, and I’m working on it. Believe me.
So, when I say I admire (d) Steve Jobs, then you must know
that I really do. *insert my techie paragraph above here* You understand why I
started with that now, right? Forgive me if you don’t.
Okay, so as I was saying; Steve Jobs was one of the few
people I admired in his lifetime and I think I still do even in his death. Why?
One reason: Innovation. That, to me
is the next best thing in life after God. There’s nothing like being ingenious
especially in the very competitive world that we are in.
So, is this something like a tribute to Uncle Steve? Maybe.
Followed closely by Whitney Houston and Tayo Aderinokun of GTBank, Steve Jobs
tops the list of “significant people” whose deaths hit me the most (I dare not
call them celebrities).
Where am I going with this? Yesterday, I read Steve Jobs’ popular
Stanford 2005 speech again and a few things I had missed came to light, some of
which I want to share:
1. Connecting the Dots: “Again, 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. This approach has never let me down,
and it has made all the difference in my life.”
#Note to Self: To that statement of trusting in
something, I would add GOD. The
absolute importance of trust and faith can never be over-emphasized. Is all of
life itself not based on trust and faith? How is it that we are able to sleep
every night and believe that in the morning we are going to wake up? Isn’t it
because we trust that Someone or something has the job of ensuring that? You
might take this to be spiritual, but as far as I’m concerned, all of life and
living is spiritual. The question is which spiritual force controls you?
2. Love
and Loss: “I was lucky — I found what
I loved to do early in life…and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two
of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees…and I had
just turned 30. And then I got fired... I was a very public failure…But
something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did... And so I
decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting
fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The
heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most
creative periods of my life…I returned to Apple, and the technology we
developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance… I'm convinced that the only thing that kept
me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And
that is as true 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 great work. And the only way to do great work is to love
what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with
all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great
relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep
looking until you find it. Don't settle.”
#Note to Self: It doesn’t matter how many times you
fail or even how terribly you fail; as long as you genuinely love what you are
doing, you will always rise. So, do what you love and love what you do. It’s
that simple. Be willing to start over, but take conscious steps to ensure you
don’t fall as a result of your own mistakes; and even with that, if you fall,
clean yourself up, get up and focus on the love you have for what you do. Don’t
decide to go for the next best thing when you can have the best. I’ve done this
man times in my life and a whole book will not accurately describe the pain I
felt when I saw the best I could have taken. Raise your head and look beyond that
corner; the best is just after the corner.
3. Death: “…Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything
— all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -
these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly
important. Remembering that you are going to 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...”
#Note to Self: What is important to you? What defines
you? If someone had to describe you in one word, what would the person say?
Whether you like it or not, that one word is what will be left of you after you’re
gone. So, what do you want that one word to be? Live your life with openness that
stems from the realization the one day, you’ll be stripped of everything by
death. All the excess luggage will go nowhere with you.
I didn’t know Steve Jobs, but I was distressed by his death.
The fact that someone with such intelligence and intensity can die one day is a
subtle prompt that one day; we’d all answer the call. The question is will you
look back on your life when you’re gone and be satisfied with how you lived?
P.S: This post is not
about negativity in any way; it’s just a subtle reminder. Forgive me if it came
across that way.
You can find Uncle
Steve’s full text here
