Thursday, October 6, 2011

11:54 PM - ,,, No comments

Eventually we all die



"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose." -Steve Jobs

Not to seem depressing or pessimistic, but, after hearing the news of Steve Job's death on Wednesday I made it a goal for myself to learn just what kind of man he was. I guess it's true what they say, only when someone dies do we truly understand what they've done or what impact they've had. 

~ A little background information 
To be completely honest, I've never hopped on the Macintosh bandwagon. Ever since grade school with the introduction of "colourful" Macintosh machines and their iconic round mouses it never occurred to me how revolutionizing such a system would come to be. Even with the iPod, I never thought it was necessary or a"smart" investment, I mean there were many other options out there at a much more affordable price range. It seems odd that such a simple device, in a sea of competition can rise so fast and high in the turn of the decade. It was when the release of the iPhone was introduced to Canada finally in 2009 when I first noticed the significance of Apple. After using the iPhone for just a few weeks, I fell in love. Now, of course this is my own opinion, but the simple elegance and simplicity of the device made everything so easy to do. On the other hand, Apple has created an amazing platform where private developers can develop their own applications. I saw immediately that what Apple created was not just a simple phone, but rather a platform in every way similar to Microsoft being a platform for the PC. At this point I've never even heard the name Steve Jobs before, it was only when I started using the iPhone 3GS and eventually 4 when I took the time to realize who was behind such intuitiveness. The one name I saw over and over again was "America's Risk Taker", "Great Thinker", "Apple's Fortune Teller", "The man who seems to know", Steve Jobs. Taking probably less than fifteen minutes, I already was able to realize a major part of the company's success lied within smart marketing spearheaded by Steve Jobs himself.

Now with some of the background information out of the way, what truly moved me, or I should say "motivated" me most about Steve Jobs' death was watching the Stanford commencement speech he gave again. To watch this speech after his passing away just makes his every word weigh so much more. It almost seems he saw it coming, or he knew immediately when he got his diagnosis of what he should do. Some quotes by Steve which I found most inspiring were:
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's 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. 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, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
The 3 quotes I included were the ones I found to reflect most strongly with myself, and I'm sure also for many others. I guess what I truly learned from his speech was that risks are worth taking as long as you yourself believe in your own success in the future. Ironically, although Steve Jobs says everyone will eventually die, he also encourages us to believe in what we feel is the right thing to do; not worry about how the future will look, but just simply believe that eventually all the stars will align, or in his words "all the dots will connect". All in all, in my own sort of conclusion to what Steve Jobs has taught me is that nothing in life is truly a failure. A failure today might be cause of success in the future, the understanding that human risks don't really exists and taking a different step off the concrete road might lead you to rugged terrain but eventually if you work hard enough you're bound to find a paradise. We're naked when we're born and we're naked when we lay in the ground, our time is limited and there's no such thing as having something to lose so make the best of your todays the worst of your tomorrows.








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