SURPRISE OF THE MONTH: COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS ACTUALLY WORTH LISTENING TO

Amazing man. Amazing, heartfelt commencement address. Good advice for anyone, college-educated or not.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005, at Stanford:

"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to 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 connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college 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 that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that 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 someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being 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 no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare 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 at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 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. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. 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. Of 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 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.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, 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. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. 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 the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. 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.

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 worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned 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 was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. 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.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "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 has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

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. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, 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 viewed the cells under a 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 I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because 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. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

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 other's 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.

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 Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. 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."

The thing is, I am sitting here all misty eyed because I know I should quit my job. That's not a joke. But I am strung out on the paychecks.

BTTT for a great article -- thanks for posting.

Quit your job and think outside the box; do something risky!

Live in the moment!

Be Ever Vigilant!

I can't tell if yer making fun or not, but looking at your profile, I sorta think you aren't.

Key here is that he did a lot of his risk taking when he was young with very little in the way or responsibilities outside of taking care of himself.

It is much more difficult to make these life altering decisions when you have kids and a spouse. Not saying it can't be done, but it is much harder to cross that bridge.

Overall, a very poignant speech for the occassion....

Reduce debt and expenses and much more is possible.

I feel like I wasted the 10 years since college shackling myself to possessions. Now, I am in the process of getting rid of it all, so maybe I can take Job's advice myself.

"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 Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions."

I remember this. The first edition was a large-format magazine about the size of a big Rand-McNally road atlas, with a big photograph of the earth from space on the front cover. Ahhh...about the best thing to come out of the sixties (besides my two oldest kids!)

Overall, a very poignant speech for the occassion....

For the occasion. Yeah, I hear ya. I actually took tons of risks at that age anyway. I actually don't have a lot of liabilities right now. And he does say STAY foolish.

"I actually don't have a lot of liabilities right now...."

In that case, if you think you can handle possible failure, than you should go for it.

The making of a great man is not how many times he fails, rather it is how many times he gets back up to try again.....

Sometimes the best thing to do is to accept what you know to be the right thing. I am an ex-Engineer from out of Silicon Valley, and have worked with some of the biggest names out there in My day. Not that long ago, events came together in such a way that I wound up leaving all that behind and found Myself living very far away from My hometown, family, and friends to live way up here in the mountains of Northern California. Having walked the path, I can tell you honestly that there were times when I was hungry for long periods, cold and worried about shelter, and facing some major health problems that were eventually estimated to be as a result of the stress I had undergone over the years in My chosen career path.

The best things in life, I now understand, are not measured by how much can be purchased with an ever-more-sizeable paycheck. It lies in personal contentment and acceptance of one's existence. Yes those periods of extreme hunger were not fun, but on the flip side I know that if I ever get lost out in the wilderness it really does not take all that much to survive on a daily basis. I know I probably will survive. Going from three large meals a day to a single can of Chunky Soup per day (sometimes only every other day) teaches that quite effectively.

Too, I no longer work in some of the highest-tech areas in the world, but anytime I feel as if that somehow leaves Me deprived in some manner, I just open up the side door and go sit outside for awhile to take deep draughts of all this fresh mountain air and watch the (sometimes still snow-frosted) tree-covered hills around Me and appreciate the silence. I am also free to explore at will all those areas of personal interest that I had so few opportunities to follow when I was working all those +/- 100 hour workweeks.

There are no gang-bangers here. No gang warfare or racial clashes. There is no smog. Traffic sounds are limited instead of being 24/7, and if an occasional snowplow has to clear the street in the wintertime, there is no Hallmark Card that can match the beauty of the scenery outside of either My front or back windows. People do not look down upon you because you are working at the local supermarket, or helping out in some little business's office, and everyone looks out for each other. There is still some crime here, of course, but there is no place in this world that does not have it.

Sometimes I have indeed worried about how to make ends meet, and more than once had a momentary pang of regret that I could not afford to splurge and buy a bottle of soda on My limited income when work was scarce, but upon reflection I have simply accepted such 'hardship' and moved on. It has not killed Me to only rarely taste a soda at times and having to 'survive' with just a glass of water. LOL.

And anytime I feel the need, I can talk a quiet walk in the mountains and just appreciate the trees, the grass, the creeks, and the occasional animals. Whatever time of the day that might turn out to be... In short, I realize one overall fact: I would rather live My life happy, than rich. Perhaps if I had not made this radical change I would have only realize that simple concept when it was too late.

May you too come to find the peace you seek.

It's gotten to the point where money itself has begun to lose its value. Don't get me wrong. I am not swimming in it. But I sorta am by my own standards. I go to this awful job that I hate, a lot of the time I am just sitting there wasting time. The work is meaningless. The place is run ineptly. I just show up and kill time for the money. I'm in a rural part of NJ about 40 miles from the good paying jobs, but I hate those jobs anyway. I recently had back surgery and now the 1+ hour commute each way in heavy traffic is killing me. I don't want to go to the poorhouse. I do have a home mortgage I want to pay off. But that's my only debt. No credit card debt. No car payment. No student loan. Just a mortgage, and it's not too bad. Our house was 175K at 6% with 35K down. We overpay every month. Even if I only give up marijuana, which I mainly use to kill the pain my job causes, I'd be saving good money. Anyway, I have to think on it. But I always used to live my life like it was my last day. Now I don't.

I don't make fun about pursuing your vision.

I remember reading a quote some years ago that I can only paraphrase here due to My limited memory of it after the passage of time: 'I would get up every workday and go into My office to do the work that was required of me. And every day I would die a little bit more'. After a few years of this, this particular individual finally just quit the prestigious position and lucrative salary to spend his days occasionally doing some minor painting of the trees and bushes around his house located in the hills around Silicon Valley. His position? President (CEO?) of a major stockbroking firm, pulling down about six or seven figures in salary. The San Jose Mercury News did an interview with him, in his much happier existence after he quit. He talked about how yes, he and his wife were concerned with how to take care of the mortgage and future income, but he knew he had made the right decision. I am not attempting to state that that is the correct decision for everyone, but just pointing out that even those in the Upper Income levels are not above certain basic considerations.

I made My decision only when I finally realized that My health was giving indications that there was a major problem with My then-high-potential career. I will most certainly never achieve the level of good health that I once had and that I used to pay so little attention to. Had I lived My life with this level of stress-free existence previously I would probably never have achieved the level of expertise and skills that I now claim, but I also would not be limited with the limited mobility, range of motion, and constant back pain that I must endure now to the end of My days. I am still in two minds as to whether it was a good trade-off.

We all fear the unknown, and to voluntarily relinquish our established daily routines and disrupt our lives for an uncertain future is one of the most difficult things we can do. Some of us can never do it. I no longer drive an incredibly fast car, nor do I live in a large house with huge garage and back yard. By the standards of the monied I am barely worth notice, and one of the most memorable things of My recent life that has occurred was when I had accepted a job stocking shelves at a small supermarket in the area -and sometimes had to really work at not laughing out loud at the posturing of My then-supervisor, who had worked there for fifteen years and was one of the most arrogant, egotistical, opinionated, and critical chain-smoking tyrants to ever stride a supermarket aisle. I had worked with some of the biggest names out there in the technical field, but this strutting little poppinjay considered himself the absolute master of his domain as much as the Captain of the H.M.S. Bounty ever did. I do not think he ever understood why I had an almost constant smile on My face whenever he was about. *grin*

Judge not your worth by the opinions of others, or by financial considerations, for your worth in such manner is only of value for the particular pool you swim in. Instead, think of how you would view yourself in several different times and places in your life. How would the younger you view what you are doing now, at this moment in your life? What would he think not only of the work you are doing, but the individual you have become? Step to one side of yourself and see if perhaps a different choice would allow your self-opinion to become more acceptable to yourself by other aspects of yourself if you were doing something else.

Finally, do not be afraid to examine other options, no matter what they might be. One of the things I have been considering is what to make of Myself here, and I am currently looking into establishing a small manufacturing facility in the area to take advantage of My technical knowledge. I would most certainly start out small, but who knows?

I remember reading all of the Calvin and Hobbes books over the years, and I still recall the last cartoon panel of the last one created by the author, Bill Watterson: Calvin and Hobbes are going down the hill on a little sled away from the camera towards the woods, and Calvin is shouting with excitement, "Let's go exploring!"

Think of perhaps accepting the world and it's full potential to be your limits. Think of how your life would be if you were not self limiting.

Remember the Hole Theory: "When you think you might be in a hole, the best thing to do is to stop digging."

When you are not content, perhaps it is time to find a way to allow possible contentment to occur.

Just some random thoughts...

Instead, think of how you would view yourself in several different times and places in your life. How would the younger you view what you are doing now, at this moment in your life? What would he think not only of the work you are doing, but the individual you have become? Step to one side of yourself and see if perhaps a different choice would allow your self-opinion to become more acceptable to yourself by other aspects of yourself if you were doing something else.

That's it right there. That's one of my favorite things to do. Up until recently, I have felt that the NowHuck was sacrificing for the good of the FutureHuck. That I'll thank me later for taking care of finances. Which is fine, but especially since my back surgery, it's getting harder to do. And meanwhile, I have really been wearing thin, and I have some things that I love to do bringing in some cash. Not a ton, but some. Anyway, I dig what you are saying.

The other thing I like to do is think of myself on my death bed, and how I will feel about the way I lived. Will I feel regret for not doing something? Will I have been too cautious?