I always prefer to listen to ‘Yaadon Ka Idiot Box’ over
radio; but often miss it. So, today I was browsing through their official Youtube
page and found this story out. This is a rattling good story wonderfully
crafted by Anu Singh and beautifully portrayed in the magical voice of Neelesh
Misra . Marvellous! Give it an ear.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of
the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be
told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I
want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three
stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out
of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in
for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young,
unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She
felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything
was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that
when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a
girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of
the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?"
They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my
mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated
from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only
relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to
college.
And 17 years
later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as
expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being
spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it.
I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was
going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my
parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it
would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was
one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop
taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on
the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all
romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms,
I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk
the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the
Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following
my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you
one example:
Reed College
at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.
Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was
beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to
take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to
do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the
amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great
typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way
that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this
had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later,
when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.
And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful
typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac
would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And
since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would
have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this
calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful
typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots
looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking
backward 10 years later.
Again, you can't
connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You
have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This
approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky —
I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my
parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown
from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000
employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year
earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired
from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought
was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so
things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and
eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with
him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my
entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really
didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation
of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being
passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for
screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about
running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I
still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one
bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start
over.
I didn't see
it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing
that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was
replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about
everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the
next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar,
and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on
to create the world's first computer animated feature film,Toy Story,
and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable
turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we
developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene
and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty
sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was
awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits
you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only
thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what
you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work
is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly
satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great
work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't
settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And,
like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll
on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
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.
About a year
ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it
clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was.
The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is
incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.
My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's
code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you
thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It
means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as
possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with
that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an
endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a
needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but
my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a
microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare
form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and
I'm fine now.
This was the
closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few
more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit
more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
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.
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.
When I was
young, there was an amazing publication calledThe Whole
Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he
brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before
personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters,
scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35
years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat
tools and great notions.
Stewart and
his team put out several issues ofThe Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its
course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.
On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning
country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so
adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin
anew, I wish that for you.
No doubt, digitization has
taken over in most aspects of life. Instances of online transactions, e-learning,
social life on the net, online stores are common now days. Then there are these
easy-to-carry and light-weight e-book readers that promise to revolutionize
your reading experience in such a way that it would push you over the edge to
forget the old traditional methods. Few such gadgets are Kindle, Nook, Kobo.
Now, what I’m going to write not only applies to the pre-mentioned devices but
to all such appliances that are available in the retail stores.
It’s
an undeniable fact that the market for the e-book readers is growing like a
wild fire. They are ultra-light, easy to carry and have a plethora of
customization options – like adjustment of brightness and font size. Besides,
one could highlight a portion of text that he or she likes. You could have your
very own e-library. And what not! Even the e-books are cheaper than the print
books. They help curb deforestation! Yes. When you don’t print a book, you save
paper; which in turn holds back the cutting of trees. Recent surveys show that
e-books have already attracted the masses and these are most peoples’ first
choice now-a-days.
But
then there are stereotypes, who still love to purchase print books rather than
downloading e-books. Don’t panic! You are not alone. I also belong to your
category. The experience that one gets while running your fingers on the crisp
pages is amazing. To add to it, I even love the smell of the new books. They
feel so awesome. To preserve the quality of these books could be challenging.
But an avid lover could also achieve that feat. I also have an experience with e-books. I had
downloaded many of them; but have been able to read only two of them!
Downloading seems easier. But reading, NOT!
It’s
not that easy to comment on which is better. It solely depends on the reader.
If, he/she is contented with the print version, he would go for it. Otherwise, it
might be the time to knock the door of the ‘e’ version.
There
might be hardly anyone who doesn’t need success. But again, there would be just
a few people willing to push themselves off the edge. “Men at some time, are
the masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in
ourselves that we are undertaking”, said the greatest writer of English
literature, William Shakesphere.
Yes,
Success comes to those who never quit. Ability, boldness courage and hard work,
topped with sheer luck are some of the factors needed to succeed in a
particular field. But, these factors merely can’t decide ‘how successful a
person is’ or in other words, the yardstick of success.
Success
comes to those who do the same thing, but in a different way. The ability to
see the things from an altogether different perspective makes one successful.
Many of them had seen the apple falling. Yet it took an extraordinary mind to
think differently and come up with the idea of gravitation. Yes, he was the
father of Physics – Sir Isaac Newton. Another such instance is of Thomas Alva
Edison. It’s believed that he had failed ten thousand times before inventing
the bulb. “I have not failed, I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work”,
were his words after the great invention. Hence, being positive and having
optimism are also required to succeed.
Success
is how high you bounce back when you hit rock bottom. It’s necessary to fail
several times in order to succeed. I can recall such an incident. There was
this boy, who had the ardent desire to crack the Cyber Olympiad with rank 1. He
had begun trying his luck since he was in class two. He failed not only in that
attempt, but also in the subsequent eight attempts. He could not achieve the
feat. The constant failure had thrashed his confidence. He did not appear the
next year. Still, somewhere deep inside, the wish still prevailed. It was his
last year at school. He didn’t want to live a life of regret. So, he decided to
try once more. “This was the last chance”, he had told himself. He had prepared
well. But, still felt he hadn’t done justice to the paper. And, when the
results were out, WHOA! He had secured the first rank – both in the school
level and the district level. He also was second in the state. The
determination and hard work had finally paid off. I was that boy. Yes, it’s
true, success comes when you least expect it.
The
definition of success for different people is different. Some see it in the
money they possess; some in the power they possess. Some even equate it with
the lifestyle they are leading. But is this success real? Ask a father who has
earned millions, but lost his child in the process. Is he successful? No! Think
of a corrupt politician. He might have enough power at his possession. But is
his success genuine? No! Then there are several people, leading a lavish
lifestyle – showing their success to the society. But, can the quality of life
be compared to the brands one adores? No! People without all these would be
leading a happy life.
Hence,
to be frank, there’s no yardstick of success. It’s just how happy and content
you feel deep inside your heart. Do something good. Make your parents proud.
Spread smile. The amount of contentment that you would receive would prove to
be the yardstick. Then you can call yourself successful. :)
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