[dba-Tech] Steve Jobs: The Last Word

Arthur Fuller fuller.artful at gmail.com
Tue Oct 11 10:00:39 CDT 2011


It's only fitting that Steve himself get the last word. To preface, like the
Beatles and many others, Steve wandered India for a while, where he
converted to Buddhism. He also experimented with LSD, which he described as
"one of the two or three most important things [he had done] in [his] life."

The following is quoted from a speech he gave to Stanford University's
students in 2005:

"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,
mkarma, whaever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all
the difference in my life....

"If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you will most
certainly be right.

"For the past 13 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked
myself if the day were the last in my life, would I want to do what I am
about to do today? And when the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a
row, I know I need to change something.

"Remember that I would be dead soon is the most important tool I have
encountered to help me make the right choices in life. Remembering that you
are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you
have something to lose.

"No one wants to die and yet death is the destination we all share. No one
has ever escaped it. And that's as it should be because Death is very likely
the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears up
the old to make way for the new.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't
be trapped by dogma, 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 want to become. Everything
else is secondary."

Words to print out and hang beside our bathroom mirror.

Arthur


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