"The Thomas Edison of Our Time"

As I drove into work today, WBEZ - Chicago's NPR affiliate was offering commentary on the passing of Steve Jobs last night. The commentator referred to Jobs as "The Thomas Edison of our time".

This phrase made me stop and think. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, right? That's what my elementary education at Central Lee Community Schools taught me. A seemingly small invention, but through this harnessing of electricity, he opened the door for an infinite number of other advancements in technology and modern luxuries we now enjoy.

Similarly, Steve Jobs, alongside Steve Wozniak, invented the Apple computer in his garage. Now a laughably simple piece of technology, this device opened the doors for an outpouring of technological advancements. As a techno-minded friend of mine posted on my facebook epitaph to Jobs last night, "Can you imagine a PC without the windows OS? Without a mouse? Without a GUI (Graphical User Interface)? Jobs' crew at Apple made the PC what it is today 10 years before Microsoft started trying the same innovations." All of those who grew up in the 90's and beyond owe their current lifestyle to this man, in some regard or another.

So when the following words were forwarded to me by a co-worker this morning, I knew I had to share them hear. The chilling relevancy of this commencement address, given by Jobs in 2005, reminds us of what is important in life.

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

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.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Talk about a true Renaissance Man. And I haven't even mentioned his impact on the worlds of marketing, public speaking, Computer animation, the music industry, the telecommunication world, and the education system.

Thank you very much, Steve Jobs. An innovator, a dreamer, and a revolutionary. Your ideas and inspiration will be greatly missed, and your impact on the world will not be forgotten.

 

~CW

Keep on Trucking

There is just something I love about driving a truck.

Please put the above statement in context. I drive a 2008 Toyota Matrix. A gunmetal gray hatchback that gets an average of 34 mpg. I love my car. I love everything about my car. It is the perfect vehicle for my life – living, working, and playing in a midsized metro area.

But when I recently drove my father's 2005 Ford F-150 Lariat quad-cab pickup truck, every logical reason for owning a sub-compact, fuel-efficient Toyota went out the window. The car fulfills every logical need I have for vehicular transportation, but the truck meets a more inherent, philosophical need. If you were to compare the two vehicles:

Toyota Matrix

Compact

Great handling

Easy to get in and out

Fold down seats create additional cargo room

Fuel-efficient

Sits low to the ground – little wind resistance

Ford F-150

It's friggin' huge

Takes corners like a boat

You need a rope to pull yourself into it

Its a truck. It has a bed. What other cargo room do you need?

Fuel? What is fuel? This thing goes through it like water

You'd be closer to the ground riding a giraffe

Every Girl's Crazy 'bout a Pickup Man

It may be a deep-seated masculine impulse, or it may be something I learned growing up in a farming community in Southeast Iowa. Trucks are the gold standard in Lee County and trying to find a Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, or Hyundai dealership within one hundred miles of my old country home is near impossible.

In high school, I would drive my little auction bought 1993 Mazda truck to school, and squeeze into a spot between any variety of giant 1980's Chevy or Ford truck. Mud tire clad, lift kit jacked, PA system blaring, aftermarket Cherry Bomb straight pipe exhaust ripping through the sonic atmosphere, these behemoths of the Central Lee High School parking lot would roll through the rows like prowling lions, daring a smaller car to cross their path. The 454 big-block engines would roar out a warning to the lesser vehicles, lest they be crushed under wheel like the tin cans they were.

My truck? It was a wounded meerkat. Stay out of the way, and I'd be fine. Otherwise my little red rice burner* would be a little red rice cake.

A Truck of a Different Color

The truck got me through high school. In college, my Mazda went kaput and I inherited a 1985 GMC Grand Sierra from my grandfather – a loaner that served me well for the rest of my higher education. At Monmouth College, where the student body is largely comprised of suburban Chicago minds, I encountered a very different vehicular phenomenon.

As the country mouse among city mice, my truck signified a tough agrarian existence. My newly-acquired “farm boy” image was further heightened when I cut the shoulder-length hair I'd sported throughout high school. My summer job working for my grandfather's farm implement sealed the deal, as I proudly wore my WALLJASPER CONSTRUCTION hat throughout the school year. I'd somehow gone from the hippie/punk kid driving a little foreign clunker in high school to the down-home country boy sporting the hulking pickup in college. I cannot really qualify this change in perception as good or bad, but it was certainly an interesting realignment of reality. Over the next few years I wore my agrarian heritage on my sleeve as something that made me stand out at Monmouth.

That old GMC would go on to be featured as a part of the ZBT homecoming float, haul pianos, drums, and more than its fair share of students, and cart all of my personal possessions to my new home in Davenport, Iowa.

But as all things are cyclical, my life would lead me back to a foreign vehicle. The GMC didn't do well for my wallet as I zipped around the Quad Cities on sales calls. So I sent it back to the farm, where it could be free to roam as God intended.

And I bought a Toyota. The more responsible choice.

*I apologize for the potential political incorrectness of the term rice burner as a pejorative synonym for an Asian made vehicle. This term is common vernacular in Southeast Iowa, where an American owned car company was held in much higher regard than any foreign made vehicle.

Pee my Pants at Central Lee

“If peeing in your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.”

Everyone's peed their pants before right? I'm not talking about diaper clad pant wetting – that's understood. I'm referring to 'old enough to know better', urination in the Levi's, public embarrassment grade leakage. I've had my fair share of societal faux pas, some of which have included public urination, and one in particular has left an indelible mark on my psyche.

In first grade, I was in Mrs. Ekle's class. I remember a few distinct features of that year of my elementary career – Reading A year with Frog and Toad, Andy Peck and I playing with Transformers action figures at recess (that's the original Transformers – none of this Shia Labeouf business), Matt Hobbs contorting himself into yoga positions during our comprehension worksheets, and the beloved afternoon milk breaks.

The milk break was more than just a reprise from academia or a benefit of USDA subsidies to the dairy industry. It was an exercise in civility and control. We lined up, alphabetically, cruelly leaving me to the portion of the line that I'd command for the majority of my career in the Central Lee School system. It seems they were ardent supporters of alphabetic organization, at least in the 90's. This left me taking up the rear my whole stint in Central Lee academia.

On the day which stands out among every other in my first grade experiences, we lined up at the door and, upon reaching relative silence, began our single file trek to the lunch room, where we'd brandish our blue card stock lunch tickets for punching, proceed past the brushed steel coolers until we found the rectangle box of chocolate or white dairy that suited our fancy. Then we'd circle back into the hallway and sit against the wall while we consumes our beverages.

The wall was a free for all. No rules of seating based on last names. No mandates banning free speech, or any speech. It was one of our brief respites from the uber-order that is elementary school life. So we clamored to the mustard yellow wall that stood opposite the cafeteria and attempted to find an open space next to our friends. Fifteen minutes later, as we prepared to deposit our empty cartons in the appropriate waste receptacle, Mrs. Ekle marched before us, obviously furious. In tow was a girl whose full name I honestly cannot recall, but her first name was Mary. She was in tears.

In an egregiously furious tone, Mrs. Ekle brought down the wrath of a mother rhino onto the students before her. As we soon learned, Mary had been ostracized, turned away from the wall by every student she approached. All she wanted was to sit and drink her milk, maybe some small talk. But this had not been afforded her.

I can recall Mary's appearance – ashamedly all to well. Bear in mind the fact that I was not in any way fashionable, popular, or even couth in my elementary days. I do not recount the following memory from the ivory tower of any chic appearance of my own.

Mary was not always the most kempt. She generally had mysterious stains on her obviously second, third, or fourth hand clothing. The odors that exuded her being were not always identifiable, and rarely were they pleasant. Mix this with awkward social conduct and it's clear to see that her classmates, myself included, were not always the most welcoming. I am not at all condoning the behaviors of my first grade self. Kids are mean, and we were probably mean to that girl. I will say that, on this particular day, I was not party to the injustice that befell Mary. I don't know that I would have treated her any differently, but I did not malign her on that occasion.

Upon receiving the brimstone of Mrs. Ekle's disappointment, we all sheepishly stood, resumed our alphabetic chain gang, and shuffled back to the classroom in silence. Our judge, jury, and executioner stood before us and delivered our sentence.

“For the rest of the day, we are all going to work in silence. No one is to utter a word. Take this time to think about the way you treated Mary. Would you like to be left out that way?”

We had about an hour to ruminate on our misdeeds. We pulled out workbooks, drawing paper, and activity pads and commenced the restitution process. About a third of the way through our noiseless trial, the chocolate milk began to make its way through my system and into my underdeveloped bladder.

I raised my hand. Mrs. Ekle, from across the room, shook her head, a somber, silent

“no”.

I sat their for a few more moments, trying to focus on the workbook. Which image was not like the others? I couldn't tell. All I could focus on was the ever growing urge to let loose the torrent of urine that was building. I stood and began to approach the teachers desk. I was stopped in my tracks by the steely glare of a tempestuous tutor. She pointed at my desk, and I returned, growing ever more desperate. I began to dance in my chair. I crossed my legs. That just made it worse. I looked around to see if anyone else could see my panic. I squirmed, vainly attempting to coax the fluid back up into my digestive system. Finally, I could hold it back no longer. The dark stain began to eek through my Ninja Turtles Underoos and make itself evident on my pants. I shrunk into my seat. The other students at the table began to smell that something was amiss. It didn't take long for the entire class to draw the conclusion that I had peed my pants.

As titters and murmurs began to break out across the silent classroom, Mrs. Ekle stood up to reprimand the cacophonous children. As she strolled about the room, she too caught the acrimonious scent of urine on her palate. She found me doggedly close to the underside of my work table, and sent me to the nurses office to get cleaned up.

Leaping from my chair, I walked with such a hurried pace that it bordered running. With the chance of being stopped for excessive sprinting, I slowed down to a loping walk. I reached the nurses office, explained my accident, and was told to STAND where I was while the nurse found some replacement garments. She disappeared into the bathroom and returned with two items. Handing them to me, she callously said,

'These are the smallest ones I got. They'll have to do. Use the towels in the bathroom to pat yourself dry.”

As I locked the bathroom door, my eyes fell on the brown sandpaper that hung from a dispenser beside the sink. It wasn't inviting in the slightest, but compared to the clammy feeling I was currently experiencing, it was a step up. I disrobed from the navel down, cleaned up as best I could, and slid the oversized, dingy pair of white underoos onto my tiny frame. I then hoisted up a pair of stonewashed jeans that had to be made for a 5^th grade girl. Clutching the baggy waistband to my nipples, I poked my head out of the bathroom,

“What do you want me to do with my...old clothes?”

I was handed a paper grocery sack and with an ill fitting belt strapping the gigantic pants to my torso, I soon was on my way back to my first grade classroom, pee pants in tow. I rebuffed the piteous looks and sneers as best as possible, sighed a monumental sigh of relief upon hearing the final bell, and raced to the bus.

The walk home from the bus stop was one of both dejection and relief. The paper sack hung at my side like a bag of cement, the weight of my shameful urine pulling my arm down and causing my chin to rest on my chest. I dared not make eye contact with the cars that drove by – everyone surely knew what that bag signified. I reached our back door, collapsed into the house and tore away any reminders of that awful incident.

In retrospect, this catastrophic event of my elementary school tenure seems comedic. But somewhere in my soul, the events of that day still shame me. I doubt that anyone else remembers the day I peed my pants in Mrs. Ekle's first grade class, but if they do, I hope they don't hold it against me.

The trials we face as children shape who we are today. How we react to those trials shape how we view the rest of the world.

All names used in this essay are used for comedic purposes only. I mean no defamation and harbor no ill feelings to anyone for the events that occurred. I hope you enjoy my self deprecation as much as I enjoy sharing it!