Blog
Taking a Bite of the Apple, Lessons from Steve Jobs
by Peg Rowe
October 8, 2011
As I was sitting down to write this weeks’ Tiara Blog, I heard the announcement that Steve Jobs had died, having lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. This news was not entirely surprising, his recent resignation as CEO of Apple signaled that his health issues were quite serious.
Like many of you, I am sad that the world has lost a true visionary, someone who could see around the corners. There are very few people who have the capacity to imagine products and services we don’t even know we want. The ability to create products a focus group can’t define and predict. And then, possess the discipline to execute and make the vision a reality.
There are many tributes recognizing and honoring Steve Jobs for this unique capacity. He’s being compared to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford as unmatched innovators. While he’s a visionary and an innovator, he’s also resilient, capable of reflecting on his success and failures, learning from both. When he delivered the Stanford University Commencement Address in 2005, he told three stories from his life, weaving in lessons on life and mortality. There are so many memorable passages from his speech and this one I found particularly impactful:
“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.”
His message is simple and straight forward, facing his own mortality brought clarity, focus and freedom… the clarity from stripping away external circumstances and concerns; the focus on what’s truly important and the freedom to follow his heart. These clear-cut ideas echo themes I believe in, and, know that I get distracted from. I let fears and judgments get in the way, pulling me off my purpose and diverting me from inspired actions that will make a difference.
While I will admire Steve Jobs for his vision and innovation, there’s a bigger lesson from his life, to be present to the essence of my life and set my sights on what’s most important. I’m reminded of this quote from the poet, Mary Oliver, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
To read the text of Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, click on the following link:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
Dear Peg,
Thank you so much to remind me.I really miss the guy, even I never have met him personally. With all the wisdom about life and death, all the profound acceptance I experience about the miracoulous inevitable cycle of life, the MISSING stil hurts.
Two days after Steve Jobs passed away, my dear friend Paul passed away in exactly the same way. He also was a great man with a great vision. The last 7 years in his life he found true joy. He finally could follow his heart. In order to follow our heart, we have to unlock it first. We have to dare to be vulnerable. And a vulnerable heart is a heart full of compassion, a tender heart, also a heart that sheds tears….no longer tears of resistance and pain, but tears of love no longer to be able to express itself through this significant other.
My faith is that we allways are able to find others, to find each other to share our love with. Whatever happens, lets have the courage to live with an open heart, and lets help each other to keep our hearts open, because we need each other to bare the missing, to transform it into love itself.
I miss you Paul! I miss you Steve! I miss you dad!