Advice from Steve Jobs
Monday, August 29, 2011 at 5:00AM This is from the famous commencement speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford:
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.
Steve Jobs, commencement speech in Life
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He also said in that 2005 commencement address:
"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."
When he wrote that speech he thought that he had beaten the cancer and that he hoped to have in his words "decades" more of living.
Six years later I wonder how he feels about dying now?
My heart breaks for him and I do hope that he finds faith in Christ and comes to understand that there is life everlasting after death but nothing he accomplish in his life will open that door. I will pray that for him.
Jobs is a proven materialist. He has padded his own coiffures with more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime.
It's people like Jobs who have contributed to western materialism, the kind that helped bring the Roman Empire down. Only God's word will stand.
I'm a beneficiary of the technology developed by Apple, while at the same time I recognize that their products can become idols. I think he's wise in some of what he's said. I hope I'll develop the same urgency about more important things - and that he will too.