Wednesday, 05 October 2011 22:16

The death of Steve Jobs has affected me; more than I would have expected.  Why?  He was perhaps the true genius of our--my--generation.  As I was watching the CNN coverage of his death, I was only half paying attention.  The other half of me was surfing the Net on my IPad reading about his life.  It took me 10 or 15 minutes to realize the irony.   Surfing the net on my IPad was already second nature to me; a new way to multi-task as I was trying to absorb as much information as I could in as little time as possible.

Yet, as the news coverage flashed images of the Apple II, the Macintosh, the MacBook, the IPhone, the IPad, my life also flashed before me.  I remember where I was in my life as these innovative products were introduced.  I thought back to the first Mac I owned, using the MacWrite word processing program which was loaded on a floppy disk, because the original Mac had no hard drive.  Hard to imagine now, huh?  A computer with no hard drive?  Everything I needed, including all of my documents, was on a single floppy.  How many of you reading this have never used a floppy disk?

Jobs was iconic, of course, and will be forever remembered for how he changed the technological landscape; for how we acquire information, for how we communicate, for how we live.  But as I have been reading about him, I am most struck by his philosophy of life...and his views of death.  The commencement address he delivered at Stanford University in 2005 contains what may be, for me, Jobs' most enduring legacy.  For, beyond his creative genius, he had a grasp of what it takes to live a life of meaning and purpose.

One enduring piece of advice from Jobs is to "not settle."  Jobs suggested that "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."  Jobs argued against settling for anything less: "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....So keep looking until you find it." 

Jobs' philosophy of life was no doubt influenced by the reality of living with pancreatic cancer since 2004.  Yet, he said, since age 17 he lived with a keen awareness of death.  For 33 years, Jobs said, he looked in the mirror every morning and asked himself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer was "no" for too many days in a row, he said he knew he needed to change something.

Jobs also was keenly aware that "sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick."  The challenge is continuing to live life despite the challenges and hardships.  Living with an awareness of the reality of death, though perhaps gruesome to some, can provide a perspective that allows one to live life more fully, more passionately, more authentically.  "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," said Jobs.  "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."

So, perhaps that is the take-away.  To look in the mirror each day.  To live life fully.  To take risks.  To follow your heart. To do what you love. To not settle for less than you can be.  As Jobs put it in his commencement address to the Stanford class of 2005:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And 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."