A great read.. heartwarming and inspiring..

(I have never posted someone else's writings in this blog. But, this is so execellent and I do not know how else to get it out to other people. Therefore, I am taking the liberty to post it and encourage others to read it. I will link it to facebook and email a link to as many as I can. --HF) STEVE JOBS CEO, Apple & Pixar Animation (This is a commencement speech that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, gave at Stanford University in 2005. In it, Steve recounts three personal stories and his advocacy of 'following your heart and doing what you love to do.') 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, its 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 its 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. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

First Dental Visit

I recently went to a new dentist. I like to change every so often, thinking that someday I might find one who could work wonders without costing me an arm and a leg. I have horrible teeth. They were always straight, but there was a bite that caused them to wear each other out. They always say it is caused by grinding my teeth, but I don’t think so. I think it is just the way they hit each other. It is the same bite causing the wear on teeth that my father had to contend with. But, he died young so the wear didn’t get as bad as what I am experiencing. They are wearing off down to the gum. They can be fixed. But, the last estimate I had was $30,000.00 and that was nearly ten years ago. It would probably be more like $40,000.00 today and at my age, 66, with my level of health, fair to OK, I see no reason to spend that kind of money.

I credit my problems to the bite which is something my father passed down to me through his genetics. And, another thing I suspect may have contributed to it was penicillin. Penicillin had just been discovered, or invented, when I was born. Suffering from serious ear infections, I received 21 consecutive daily injections of this new wonder medicine as a tiny infant. I’m not sure this didn’t tend to weaken the enamel on my still forming teeth.

My latest dentist was doing a review of the condition of my teeth. There is not a tooth in my head that doesn’t have a cap or a crown or a filling. A majority of them have had a root canal. And still they look like they belong to a hillbilly from the mountains who has never seen a dentist. Or, a meth addict. He was inspecting each tooth and his aid was keeping notes. He was giving the number of each tooth when he came to an anomaly. He said it looked as if one was missing, however the space seemed to have filled with the other teeth pushing in. I told him there was one missing, it had been pulled when I was in my early teens.

It was my first visit to a dentist. A cavity had developed in one of my permanent molars and got steadily worse. It hurt from time to time with the pain getting more intense and more constant. Finally, one night I bit on a tube of toothpaste to squeeze out the last of the paste. Tubes of toothpaste in those days were made of aluminum rather than plastic and, for some reason I still don’t understand, chewing on aluminum will set off a toothache like nothing else. It hurt all night and the next day my mother announced she would be taking me to the dentist.

Roger Miller was raised in my small town. (Those who don’t know who Roger Miller is should ignore the foregoing sentence, or google his name.) He once said that we didn’t have a local drunk in Erick (our home town), so the boys took turns. That’s not really true; we had several. And Doc Bonefield, the local dentist, was one of them.

Mom took me to see Doc Bonefield the next morning. They lived in a nice house in town and his office was set up off the living room in what would ordinarily have been the dining room. Mom introduced us and told him of my complaint. He took me into his dental office, sat me in the chair and leaned me back. After laying out his tools, he stepped into an adjoining closet, retrieved a bottle of whiskey and took a large drink straight from the bottle. He returned and proceeded to pull the molar. Only one of us in that room had any deadening that day and it wasn’t the guy having his tooth yanked out.

I didn’t go back to the dentist for another twenty years. Another cavity resulted in an abscess. It was my own fault because I had discovered a toothache kit at the pharmacy and had used it to ward off the pain. I held off the pain all right, but it allowed the decay to get worse until the tooth could not be saved. Actually, it could have been saved but the dentist I used wasn’t much better than Doc Benefield. He liked to bend the tooth until it broke at the gum line; then he would cut the roots to separate them and dig them out individually. I lost two teeth to that barbaric treatment, but at least I enjoyed some deadening. The abscess was painful, but I was introduced to the wonder of codeine.

I eventually became concerned with the condition of my teeth and started seeking out better treatment. They look horrible and if anyone could see them, which I have learned to prevent, they would have no idea I have spent tens of thousands of dollars getting them to where they are today. I keep looking for a dentist to pull them and make me some dentures. But, they don’t want to do that. They all tell me what wonderful bone structure I have and how good the roots are. I haven’t been without pain in my mouth for ten or fifteen years, but I have great roots and bone structure. I recently changed dentists and asked the new one about pulling them. I got the same response, great bone structure and roots. He built them up some and improved them, but they still look like something from the 1920s or 30s.

I’ll bet Doc Bonefield would pull them.

Mordecai the Mortician

I never knew if Mordecai was his name or if that was just what we called him. He was at least a decade older than me, not so noticeable at my present age but quite a difference when I was in my early teenage years. He was a little slow and had probably been relegated in life to hard labor, if employable at all, had he not found an opportunity in something which had been his dream job all his life. Mordecai’s mother’s sister was married to the man who owned the local mortuary. She had been particularly fond of her nephew and her training as a school teacher, together with her love for her sister, had softened her heart, making her want to do all she could for him. She had singlehandedly seen to it that he got through school with a high school diploma as good as anyone’s. After he was out of school, college being out of the question, Mordecai was as prepared as possible to enter the work force.

Following a brief stint as a fry-cook at the local drive-in, it looked as if he would never be able to hold down a job again. He lost the fry-cook position for reasons which were absolutely not his fault. The drive-in became infested with mice and when that knowledge became public it was bad for business. His boss told him to do something about the mice and Mordecai, with his limited imaginative powers had only been trained to run the deep fryer. So, he applied his knowledge to the problem at hand and had it remedied in no time.

When word of Mordecai’s firing reached the ear of the public, there was a reaction against the owner of the drive-in which resulted in a loss of business from which he never did completely recover. People were furious that Mordecai had been treated in such an arbitrary and capricious manner. But, sympathy doesn’t pay the bills; he had to find another job. After a month or so of unsuccessful job search, his lovely aunt came through again. She demanded her husband hire Mordecai as an assistant at the funeral home. He didn’t want to, but he could never say no to his wife’s requests. We all assumed it might have been because she seemed to be one of the dearest, most beautiful saints we had ever seen, but we later suspected that it might have been because her requests were not requests at all.

Mordecai was hired to be just a general helper around the mortuary. His duties at first were to clean up around the place and he took to his new job with alacrity. His uncle had to admit that the place looked better than it ever had before. He would have been perfectly happy to keep Mordecai on forever in his custodial position. But, Mordecai had greater plans. It was a while before his uncle allowed him in the embalming room. That was where he really wanted to work. Like any successful person, Mordecai was working himself out of custodial work, looking for more and greater responsibilities. It was a proud day when Mordecai informed the locals over morning coffee at the café that he had been promoted to “Embalmer’s Assistant.” It wasn’t very good for business right at first; there was a noticeable drop off in the number of funerals for women who were put off by the idea that Mordecai would be touching their naked bodies. But, where else could they go. The funeral home was the only one in town. So, as time went on people became more accustomed to the idea and business picked back up.

He seemed to do well in this career change. He did not get to conduct the funerals; that would have demanded more class and dignity than Mordecai could ever muster. He did, however, work his way out of the custodial role and did everything necessary for the preparation of the body and the service.

Mr. Davis owned the local hardware store. He wore a toupee for as long as anyone could remember, and he was known as “the man with the moving hair.” When it fell off, Mr. Davis would simply pick it up and stick it back where it belonged. His hair was never situated the same two days in a row. You didn’t know if the part was going to be on the right or the left or right down the middle. One time it was even across his head, running from side to side. He might have bangs one day and a receding hairline the next. When he died we all wondered how they would get that thing to stay on his head. At the funeral, as we walked by paying our respects, more than one of us laid our hands on his head imparting a special blessing from God. And while we were at it we gave it just a slight push to see how well it was on there. To our surprise, it seemed solidly attached. Later, when we were through grieving and mourning, we asked Mordecai how he got it to stay on so well. All he said was, “Nailed it,” and we changed the subject.

After he had been working at the mortuary for several years, his aunt prevailed on her husband to take a vacation. They hadn’t been anywhere in years and she was reaching an age that she was a little restless and needed a change. She needed a change in scenery or else she might start looking at changing something else. Her husband didn’t feel he could get away, his was the only funeral home in town and Mordecai was his only full-time employee. She was confident Mordecai could take care of things and, after great entreaty, persuaded her husband to take her to the beach, one of those resorts in Mexico, for a week-long holiday in the sun. It was December and cold where they lived and, if the truth be known, he, too, was looking forward to some time off in a warmer climate.

Her husband prepared a list of instructions for Mordecai. He told him to just keep the doors open and keep everything looking good and professional. He had made arrangements with the mortician in the next town to cover any funerals which might arise. But, he also gave him a list with about a dozen names on it with strict instructions that if any of those particular people died, Mordecai was to call him immediately. He was to take possession of the body and keep it cool. The people on the list were simply too rich to allow the other mortician to bury them. He could net as much from one or those funerals as he would from ten normal ones. And it wasn’t just a matter getting that funeral. He knew that if he did a good job with that one it would be good advertising for getting more and bigger funerals in the future. He had a bearing about himself like a gentleman from the Old South. Often calling himself a Southern Planter, he dressed and spoke and held himself out like a character from a Tennessee Williams play. He cultivated his image wherever and whenever he could and he knew doing a rich man’s funeral was the ideal time and place to showcase his many talents.

Mordecai, left alone and to his own devices, went about the daily work of the mortuary. Only one person died that week and since she was not on the rich list, he called the neighboring mortician to come get her and conduct the funeral. Mordecai stood in the back and observed with a very critical eye. He was critical of the dress she was wearing, her makeup and her hair. Nothing was right as far as he could see. His uncle could have obviously done a better job and, for that matter, Mordecai could have done better himself. It was the first time he allowed himself to think that maybe he could run his own funeral home someday.

With little else to do, Mordecai visited with his friend, an old eccentric living outside of town, by the name of Taylor Hanks. He was a large man with a full head of white hair and a long white beard. He was known for drinking to excess, usually a cheap whiskey. But, when Mordecai’s uncle was gone, he and Taylor would break into his private stash of Jack Daniel’s Black Label. And now he was gone for a week. On the second night they had pretty well emptied the cabinet of the good stuff. Taylor had done most of the drinking, although Mordecai did his share, and as he normally did when he went on a binge, Taylor went to sleep.

Mordecai decided he needed more of the good stuff, but he was short of cash. His uncle didn’t pay him all that much, but he wasn’t in the work for the money anyway. He had a job he loved and his salary was just a little bonus for him. But, clearly he had enjoyed the liquor from his uncle’s cabinet. He wanted to buy some more of it, and he knew he needed to replace what he and Taylor had consumed. His aunt and uncle were scheduled to come home in three days so he really didn’t have a lot of time to come up with a suitable plan. There were limited opportunities to make a good living in his small town and Mordecai knew there were even fewer opportunities to make extra cash quickly. And that was what he needed, extra cash quickly.

Fortunately for him, he had visited a neighboring town just the previous week and had seen at the local Walmart a sign saying, “Pictures with Santa.” As he was thinking about this, he took inventory of what this might require and compared this to what he had on hand. He had a camera and had mastered putting pictures on the computer where he could print them off if he so desired. They printed their own funeral programs and obituaries so he had everything he needed to print pictures. He still had an old Santa Claus suit he used to wear to schools and rest homes during the season. It was a little worn, but it was still red. The only problem he could see was who would be Santa and who would take the pictures? He couldn’t do both.

As he pondered the predicament, he cast his eyes toward Taylor where he was sleeping off his inebriation, lying on the embalming table. He was a large man with snowy white hair and beard. He was perfect for the part. And Mordecai knew from experience that Taylor would be asleep for another day or so.

It wasn’t easy getting Taylor into the Santa suit. It was like working on a dead man, but, of course, Mordecai was accustomed to working on dead people. It was a struggle, but he finally got Santa dressed. Now there was another problem. Taylor was sleeping so soundly there was no way he could possibly sit in a chair with a child in his lap. About the only position he was capable of maintaining was what he was already doing, lying prone on the embalming table. There was only solution as far as Mordecai could see. He rolled the finest casket from storage into the embalming and, with the aid of ropes and pulleys, placed Taylor into the coffin. He did a little last minute touch-up on the makeup and splashed some talc on his hair and beard to make it look even whiter. As he looked at him, he was satisfied with his work and looked forward to the day Taylor would be there for real and Mordecai could do it all over again.

A makeshift sign was placed out front. “Pictures with Santa.” All was ready and Mordecai waited with camera in hand.

Mollie Thompson worked at the local day care center. She wasn’t much smarter than Mordecai, if any at all. She had grown up with him and had gone to school with him. She and he had dated a little and most of the townsfolk thought they would make a good couple. They enjoyed the idea of their dating, but rather cringed at the thought of procreation. About the only people who expressed any concern for Mollie’s working with small children were people who didn’t have any of their own in the day care center. Those mothers who had children there really didn’t have any choice in the matter. They had to leave them somewhere and that particular center was the only place in town that provided such a service. So, they either knew Mollie better than the other townspeople and knew she was able to provide safe and nurturing care for their children, or they simply didn’t want to admit their misgivings. People with little alternative often have to accept the unacceptable.

Mollie was taking her young charges, aged 4 and 5, with a few just having turned to 6 years old, on a walk. It was a pretty day for December, the weather was unseasonably warm. They had a long rope on which the children held as they walked. Mollie took the lead and her subordinate followed behind, with the children strung out between them. It was a sight familiar to the people of the town and it pleased them to see the small children being so orderly and well-behaved.

As they approached the mortuary, Mollie saw the sign advertising the pictures with Santa. She didn’t know they were doing this as she had heard nothing about it and the sign wasn’t there the day before. She didn’t have the parents’ permission to have pictures made, but she thought what a treat it would be if she could just step in and let the kids see Jolly Old St. Nick. She turned off the sidewalk onto the walk to the front door. Her charges dutifully followed her like a flock of ducklings following their mother. And her aid came along unquestioningly, like a caboose bringing up the rear, following the engine without any input where or when it would go.

Mordecai was a little surprised to see them. They were his first visitors for the morning. He didn’t know anything about parental consent before taking pictures. He simply thought this was a windfall. Mollie thought she saw a little glow in Mordecai’s eyes as she entered the building and was convinced it was because of her. Mordecai smiled at her and she smiled at him. And she then smiled a little smugly at her underling who didn’t have a boyfriend like Mordecai, and probably not even the possibility of ever having one of such high quality. After the greetings, Mordecai took them into the viewing room.

Neither Mordecai nor Mollie had sense enough to see the wide eyes of the little tykes as they looked deep into the room and saw Santa lying in the coffin. Mollie could only see Mordecai and Mordecai could only see dollar signs, still having not been told there could be no pictures at that time. Everyone was seeing their own reality and the reality of the children was Santa lying in a coffin.

It took a little coaxing to get the kids up near the coffin. And as they stood there looking at him, Santa awakened.

(The above is purely fictitious. It was based on a sign I saw outside a funeral home a year ago which read, “Pictures with Santa.”)