Maybe Steve Jobs’ Passing Can Be A Good Thing

October 6th, 2011 • Related • Filed Under

 

Please don’t be angry. Hear me out.

 

I deeply regret Steve Jobs’ death. I share the pain, sorrow and anguish of his family, friends and co-workers. He was too young. He had too much yet to give. We had become dependent. We had high expectations for him. We looked to him to change our lives.

 

I never met Steve Jobs, but I think he would have been bemused by our neediness. We were always looking at his products and spent too little time studying him. His commencement speech at Stanford should be required reading for all high school students. I didn’t say college students—high school students.

 

Here’s why.

 

Let’s go back to the 1970’s.

 

The US economy was characterized by two words: malaise and stagflation. World economists predicted that Japan and Germany would soon rocket past the US in GDP and economic growth. Many Americans shrugged and bought into that fate.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Two men almost single handedly changed that. Neither one graduated from college–Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Their work, and certainly that of co-workers and others in Silicon Valley changed the world and led the US through a nearly unprecedented era of growth, with heretofore unknown “tech jobs.”

 

Passion, energy, and belief enabled them. A degree from a university was deemed a waste of time and money to them. Steve Jobs called dropping out of college “one of the best decisions I ever made.” He did not stop learning. He merely framed his learning around his passion.

 

One could reasonably argue that had Jobs and Gates stayed around to attend their college commencement speeches, we would not be the country we are today.

 

I’m not against education. I have benefited from it, but education must fuel your passion. A degree does not confer passion, and sadly the pursuit of it can take time off the clock, create debt that stifles risk taking, and actually prevent people from pursuing their passion.

 

I look out at the protesters on Wall Street and to a degree can sympathize with them. Many have degrees, but can’t find a job. They are angry and dejected, but looking in the wrong place.

 

Steve Jobs had neither a degree nor a job. After a brief time at Atari he started Apple with Steve Wozniak. Not only did Jobs secure his own employment, he created over four thousand good jobs at Apple in the first ten years. No government loans, no fancy degree on the wall, just passion and unending determination.

 

He didn’t wait for someone to save him. He saved himself.

 

Then he did it again after Apple fired him. (Fired from the company he founded—how much would that hurt? It would be like being strapped into the electric chair by your own child who giggles as she throws the switch. I can’t imagine the anguish that employment decision caused. Yet, he was undaunted.)

 

Then, yet again, Jobs saved himself and the company when Apple brought him back.

 

Here’s the lesson.

 

In death we have reflection. The country is reflecting on Steve Jobs today. That is good. It should not be about the products he launched. It should be about the life he lived.

 

Sadly, the passion that drove him seems to be missing from most of our “best and brightest” today. Maybe in reflection we, as a country, can in some way get Jobs’ passion back.

 

Don’t wait for the government to help you. Don’t wait for Big Corp to give you a fancy job and make your life cushy. Don’t wait.

 

If you are a writer. Write.

 

If you are a painter. Paint.

 

If you are a salesman. Sell.

 

We can’t wait for someone to give us permission. It isn’t someone else’s problem to fix. It is ours.

 

From Jobs’ commencement speech:

 

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. 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.

 

This is why Steve Jobs’ passing may be a good thing for our country. Forget about the I-phone, the I-pad, the mac. The country needs to focus and reflect on the man. If as a nation we did that, the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates might step into the light–or maybe a whole new generation of them.

 

Steve Jobs would smile at that.

 

From Jobs: “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.”

 

We can be saddened by his passing or energized by his living. The choice is ours.

 

 

There Are 3 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Curt Coffman on 6 October 2011:

    Excellent points Dr. O’Brien, I often ask people the following question: “What percent of jobs within the U.S. require a bachelor’s degree?” I never cease to be amazed at the answers – 60%, 70% maybe even 80%+. The reality is that in 1980, 19% of all jobs required a 4-year degree. Today, that percent has dropped to 12%!

    I agree with you that education is important and have also benefited from it, but it is no longer a predictor of life/work success. Yes, it does indicate a degree of discipline and commitment to follow-through, but herein lies the problem. Any parent attending parent teacher conferences will tell you that the discussion does not focus on true learning and growth, but on compliance. Just maybe, compliance is the enemy or even the destroyer of innovation and success?

    Let’s be honest… courage to thrive and pursue non-conformance, has become the new predictor of the future. Restating your point (and forgive me if I am taking some liberties) it’s damn time we start a fearless inventory of what we “want” versus fear driven clarity about what we don’t.

  2. Comment by Lydia Ash on 6 October 2011:

    A very nice summation Steve! Just what I needed to read this beautiful October morning! Onward for all of us!

  3. Comment by Tom Hatton on 6 October 2011:

    I have been a fan of his 2005 Stanford address since I first heard it a few years back. Strangely, though considering myself neither a fatalist or one with any preoccupation with death… his passage about death always stuck with me the most. Expanding upon your penultimate notation:

    “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.”

    I think in his “3 stories” of that address, I like them in reverse order 3-2-1. But, in each, there are days, weeks and months of fertile “discussion ground”. Which, I suppose, echoes your point: we should study the man himself for the lessons…not necessarily run out and buy the next iProduct (though, we all did/do/will).

    I cannot help but see the man through the “talent” lens. However you want to call his deep and abiding love of “beauty” and “form” to go with function is perfectly encapsulated in story #1. That calligraphy riff is priceless. Especially when seeing, buried within, the line about “Windows just copies the Mac, anyway”. Ego and competitiveness, anyone? But not ego in a “look how great I am” way…rather… his connecting the dots to his own discovery of the beauty and form he built into the function of personal computing. And, the stark realization that the very world we see in ubiquitous personal computing simply wouldn’t “be as beautiful” if not for him/that.

    Many have focused on his 2nd story and that lesson is obvious. That “love what you do” dogma, frankly, isn’t new at all. The world is full of aphorisms suggesting just that (didn’t everyone’s grandma share SOMETHING like that, with them?). However, somehow Steve’s story about it had… resonance? Something different, anyway. Something for this generation (and that one, too). His focus and unwavering achievement drive somehow underscore the points you make, above. In your notes above, it could reasonably be extrapolated in the argument that he (or Gates, or others) sort of “set out to change the world”. I’m not saying you made that point, at all, but I’d bet many infer that. I’d argue that nearly everyone who did or has almost did so as a by-product of the very things we’re highlighting about Steve. It might be the end, but the means is couched (always) in the do what you do best, have a passion for and is wholly special… if it really is ALL THAT? the world can be changed.

    But, as noted, I’ve always loved story #3. Technology is a strangely perfect metaphor for his point(s): Life 2.0, 2.1, etc only happens as previous versions are thrown onto the scrap heap. Now, sadly, guys like you and me are v 1.2 or maybe v 1.2.2… so new software isn’t really being released for us, and support has gone from awesome to “call India” to “does anyone remember how to run one of these old machines?” As it should be, I suppose.

    Steve himself would probably smile at how long he cheated the game. Not so much, I’d presume, the death by cancer piece. But rather, how long he was able to actually be the arbiter of our taste, our technology and our complex relationships with it and each other. And, I think he’d grudgingly admit that some version of “him” will come along that’s stronger, better, faster, etc.

    which, I believe, is exactly your point. at least, what I took from your extremely brilliant post.

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