Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement
Apple / Pixar founder and technovangelist Steve Jobs gave this speech about connecting the dots, dropping in, love and loss, getting fired, and death. Read it.
posted by Barney at 10:02 PM
Thursday, June 16, 2005
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1 Comments:
I loved this speech. The part about connecting the dots really resonated with me, and he's right: we can only connect them going backwards, not forwards. In this connection, something that happened to me just this week might be of interest.
We just had a brief visit from my half-sisters Susan and Sylvia, who are twins born while I was on my mission. Sylvia is the one who occasionally posts on IMCA, and I have really enjoyed getting to know her in recent years. She is going through a serious personal crisis at the moment, so I gave her a good deal of one-on-one attention. In the course of our rather lengthy discussions, I remarked that at least as far as worldy considerations are concerned, I had failed at pretty much everything I ever tried to do up until I was nearly 50; however, I continued, I am not particularly embarrassed at this point in my life to admit that. The present is more important than the past, after all; and I am convinced now that our past is only important in terms of what we do with it, or what it enables us to become. The fact is that notwithstanding all the pain, disappointment, and heartache I've been through, in my last three jobs I have been wildly popular with my co-workers, and now I am doing something that is probably as perfect a match for my skills, training, experience, and temperament as anything I am ever likely to find. But I know I would not be here today, if not for all the years of struggle and pain and insecurity that went before -- or the "wanderings," as your father characterized them.
Sylvia, by the way, will be fine. I told her last night that I don't know the answer to her situation; but that when the time came for her to know, she would, and I knew she would do the right thing then. And down the road, I added, the experience would redound for her good. Or as Steve Jobs would put it, the dots will come together -- just as they did for him, and have now for me.
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