I thought I'll revive this blog from its sleep, and what better way to do that than putting a speech of one of the most prolific business persons we have today, Steve Jobs. This is his Commencement Address to Stanford 2005 Graduates...
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 san 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 ten 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 backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only
connect them looking backwards. 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 4000 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 worlds 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 called The 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 1960's,
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 of The 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.
January 01, 2008 Updated 23:27:09 (Mla time) Conrado de Quiros Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines -- It was early December, a month ago.
We were freezing our butts off in London after having just braved the cold to walk to the Underground. When we got there, I wasn’t sure the Oyster card I had with me -- that’s the equivalent of the Metro Rail Transit stored-value card in Metro Manila, though one you just kept adding value to through the slot machines -- carried enough amount for the trip. The slot machine wasn’t working so I went over to the booth.
The booth was manned by a middle-aged Asian with graying hair and a pleasant face. It wasn’t late in the day, it must have been 5:30 p.m. or so, but it was as dark as 9:00 p.m. and there weren’t too many people around. Before we got to the booth, I asked my daughter, Miranda, if she had loose change so I wouldn’t have to use bills.
When it was my turn, the Asian asked, smiling, “Pinoy ba kayo?” [“Are you Filipino?”]
He was glad to see us, and when we told him we were just passing through, he asked how things were home. He had of course heard about the events at Pen, but he wasn’t really concerned with that. He was more concerned about how we still celebrated Christmas. He hadn’t been home in some time and last he saw the country turned Christmas-y in October. I said the duration might have gotten shorter but the passion -- or inebriation -- with which we celebrated it had not.
He wished us well and punched in a couple more pounds on my card than I had paid.
London was crawling with Filipinos. The hotel we stayed in, the Royal Horseguards, harbored about 20, some of them part-time. Miranda got to learn about it at breakfast when a waiter recognized her, having The Filipino Channel at home, and took a picture of them together on his cell phone. The Pinoy was less than five feet, as gay as they come, and walked and talked (with a British accent) with complete confidence. He it was who apprised us of the “Filipino Mafia” in the hotel, as the other staff members called them, which included bellhop, lobby supervisor, waiter and laundry help.
Later, another Filipino who had been there for more than 30 years -- more than half her life, she said; she started out as domestic and worked her way up to desk clerk in a big department store -- swore there was no hospital in London that didn’t have a Filipino nurse in it. She should know, she said, because her husband who had just had a heart-valve operation, paid for by health insurance, had a whole slew of Filipino nurses to take care of him. Many hospitals there, she said, had no less than a full score of Filipino nurses in them. The influx apparently began sometime in the mid-1990s when Britain experienced a scarcity of nurses and opened its doors to applicants from abroad. Unfortunately, as my informant warned, that well has dried up, the demand for nurses has dropped to a trickle.
I have no hesitation about picking my Filipino of the Year for 2007: That is the overseas Filipino worker, or OFW.
The OFW had the most impact on the country last year -- for the last few years in fact but particularly dramatically last year when they brought the dollar crashing down. Unfortunately, the OFWs’ impact on the country has been both positive and negative, the source as much of its tragedy as of its glory, as much of its weakness as of its strength, as much of its undoing as of its survival.
It is the source of the livelihood of probably now a tenth of the population, counting the undocumented. The “wandering Jew” has been replaced by the “wandering Filipino,” the latter to be found in the steppes of Russia as on the steps of Rome’s cathedrals, in the remotest parts of Africa as on the glittering cities of Europe. But it is the source as well of enormous grief, most of the OFWs taking on menial jobs, except in places like Dubai and parts of the United States where they work as engineers, architects, doctors and IT personnel. Occupying as they do the lowest rungs of the social strata, they are often prey to abuse, discrimination and various physical and moral indignities.
Overseas work is the No. 1 home-maker in this country, it is the No. 1 home-breaker in this country: Without it this country would perish in the blink of an eye, with it families are breaking up in the blink of an eye. Overseas work has stemmed uncontrollable dollar-drain, overseas work has made possible unparalleled brain-drain -- doubly tragically in that Filipino doctors are becoming nurses to find work abroad. Overseas work allows this country to get by economically, overseas work allows this government to get by tyrannically: It is the one thing that has prevented the “social volcano,” near to bursting from the roiling magma of corruption and injustice, from exploding by offering a safety valve.
But the greatest impact the OFW has had on this country I glimpsed some years ago on a visit to the United States. I was looking over the cameras in a shop in San Francisco when a clerk came up to me. He was a Filipino and was thrilled to know I was one too. In broad strokes, he told me how he had come to the United States virtually penniless after spending a fortune to get there illegally and had worked his way in that shop from driver to supervisor of the electronics section. He advised me --as proof of his newfound status -- not to buy a camera that day but to wait a couple of weeks, since he knew for a fact the store was planning a huge sale when prices would really plunge. I said I didn’t have time -- I was going home in a couple of days.
It took him a full minute to answer. He stood there in a state of shock as though a bolt of lightning had just hit him. Finally, he blurted: “Why?”
The greatest impact of the OFW is to have reversed the equation. Yesterday you asked why when a Filipino proposed to live abroad. Today you ask why when a Filipino proposes to come home.
