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.” — Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
Erick Erickson at Redstate wrote this morning about the genius who has left us and moved on to where we all ultimately must travel.
What a funny age in which we live. At a time some are demonizing the successful and the so called 1% at the top, today the whole world is stopping to remember the guy who so profoundly changed the early twenty-first century — Steve Jobs, a man in a class by himself.
I begin and end this Morning Briefing today remembering him.
In my office where I sit this still, quiet morning I have an iMac, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Air Port. I am an Apple fan. Guys like me used to be called a cult. But a funny thing happened.
Steve Jobs made Apple the world’s most popular consumer electronics company. The iPad is the best selling tablet computer. The iPhone is the most popular smart phone. At some point the people who derisively mocked people like me found themselves — perhaps even now they don’t know it — the cult of a small fringe of people who found it cool to hate what everyone else is embracing. The minority became the majority and the majority now is the minority. Apple is cool, hits the nostalgic elements of the age, and while seemingly exclusive has become ubiquitous — a feat few can pull off.
It says something profound about Steve Jobs that a guy who grew up in the counter culture movement when “the man” and “business”, much like today, were not cool went on to redefine what cool is and what culture is through growing a business that now rivals Exxon as the most valuable in the world.
Steve Jobs is genius.
I grew up in Dubai. I was the only kid in my school who did not have a computer. But I would stay after school playing on the Apple IIe computers and then the IIgs and then the Mac SE. I learned programming, desktop publishing, and a love for writing and music both on computers Steve Jobs created.
When I moved back to Louisiana, my parents bought me a PC. I went from Dubai as the only kid in school without a computer to rural Louisiana where I was the only kid in school with a computer. In college, I finally convinced my parents to get me a Mac. I never went back.
In our lives, we occasionally come upon geniuses who give us special insight or special creations. Often we do not appreciate their genius until they have departed — like great artists whose value is undiscovered until they die. But then there are the Einsteins, the Edisons, the Disneys, the Picassos, and the Steve Jobses of the world. We not only see them and share with them that which they bring into the world, but we know we are in the presence of someone great.
And so it is that much sadder when they depart and deprive us of them. Humanity is selfish, but also glorious. Many of us are sad to see Jobs go because we want more from him, but we appreciate what Steve Jobs gave us in design and ideas and innovation while he walked among us. And now we cheer on his company and his legacy.
If there is one story to sum up the life of Steve Jobs and end this note with a smile, consider last night on Twitter. Margie Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church tweeted “Westboro will picket his funeral. He had a huge platform; gave God no glory & taught sin.” She tweeted that, according to Twitter, from her iPhone.
I wish Steve Jobs’ family well.
Requiescat in pace
