Speech by Steve Jobs to recent graduates of Stanford
On June 12, 2005, a special day for the graduates of Stanford, one of the most famous universities in the world located in the heart of Silicony Valley, was also the special day of Steve Jobs, invited to give the commencement address, the inaugural speech to the graduates. On the Stanford site is also available the original version and a short streaming video of the final part of speech.
So 'which is something known by many and now passed, but it remains current and interesting. Here is the full text of the speech (in Italian):
am honored to be here with you today at your commencement from one of the best universities in the world. I did not ever graduate. Indeed, to say the truth, this is the closest thing to a degree that I've ever gotten. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it, nothing exceptional: only three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first half, but then I continued to attend so for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
E 'started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, and made sure everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. But when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So then those who are now my parents adottivi e che erano in lista d'attesa, ricevettero una chiamata nel bel mezzo della notte che gli diceva: "C'è un bambino, un maschietto, non previsto. Lo volete voi?" Loro risposero: "Certamente". Più tardi mia madre biologica scoprì che mia madre non si era mai laureata al college e che mio padre non aveva neanche finito il liceo. Rifiutò di firmare le ultime carte per l'adozione. Poi accetto di farlo, mesi dopo, solo quando i miei genitori adottivi promisero formalmente che un giorno io sarei andato al college.
Diciassette anni dopo andai al college. Ma ingenuamente ne scelsi uno altrettanto costoso di Stanford, e tutti i risparmi dei miei genitori finirono per pagarmi l'ammissione e i corsi. Dopo sei mesi, non riuscivo to see value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and how college could help me understand. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire working life. So I decided to drop out and trust that everything would be fine. It was very difficult time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute that I let go out I could stop taking the courses that did not interest me and begin to occur in classes that I found most interesting.
It was not all rosy, though. I did not have a dorm room, ed ero costretto a dormire sul pavimento delle camere dei miei amici. Guadagnavo soldi riportando al venditore le bottiglie di Coca cola vuote per avere i cinque centesimi di deposito e poter comprare da mangiare. Una volta la settimana, alla domenica sera, camminavo per sette miglia attraverso la città per avere finalmente un buon pasto al tempio Hare Krishna: l'unico della settimana. Ma tutto quel che ho trovato seguendo la mia curiosità e la mia intuizione è risultato essere senza prezzo, dopo. Vi faccio subito un esempio.
Il Reed College all'epoca offriva probabilmente la miglior formazione del Paese relativamente alla calligrafia. Attraverso tutto il campus ogni poster, ogni etichetta, ogni cartello era scritto a mano con calligrafie meravigliose. Dato che avevo mollato i corsi ufficiali, decisi che avrei seguito la classe di calligrafia per imparare a scrivere così. Fu lì che imparai dei caratteri serif e san serif, della differenza tra gli spazi che dividono le differenti combinazioni di lettere, di che cosa rende grande una stampa tipografica del testo. Fu meraviglioso, in un modo che la scienza non è in grado di offrire, perché era artistico, bello, storico e io ne fui assolutamente affascinato.
Nessuna di queste cose però aveva alcuna speranza di trovare una applicazione pratica nella mia vita. Ma poi, dieci anni dopo, quando ci trovammo a progettare il primo Macintosh, mi tornò tutto utile. E lo utilizzammo tutto per il Mac. E' stato il primo computer dotato with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped out of college and then I had not in on that single course, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or the possibility of proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it is likely that there would be any personal computer with those capabilities. If I had not dropped out of college, I could never in on this calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Certainly at the time when I was in college it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward. But it became very, very clear ten years later, when I could look back.
Again, you can not connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that somehow, in the future, the dots will. You must believe in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This type of 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 my life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20 years. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from a company with us in a garage into a two billion dollar company with over four thousand employees. The year before we had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - 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 things went very 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 his party. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What was the main purpose of my adult life was gone and I was devastated by this.
I did not know really what to do for a few months. I felt like I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs to me - as if I had dropped the baton was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. It was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from Silicon Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed a bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I do not
realized then, but the fact of having been fired from Apple was the best thing that could happen. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me allowing me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the 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 retuned 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.
'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I had not been fired from Apple. E 'was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you like a brick on his head. Do not lose faith, though. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going was the love for what I did. You have to find what you love. And this applies to your work as it is for your lovers. Your work will 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 a good job is to love what you do. If you still have not found it yet, keep looking. Do not settle. With all my heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years pass. So keep looking until you find it. Do not 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 were the last, surely once you are right." Impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I watched every morning in the mirror and asked: "If today were the last day of my life, I do what I am about to do today?". And whenever the answer is "no" for too many days in a row, I understand that something must be changed.
Remember that I will die soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations of eternity, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remember that we 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 seven-thirty in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I did not know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me that it was a cancer that was incurable and almost certainly the type that would have been better if I put my affairs in order (which is the code to tell the doctors prepare to die). It means to tell your kids in a few months everything you thought you'd have ten years to tell them. This means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that your family is as simple as possible. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, which is the result stuck an endoscope down my throat, through the stomach and into intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few of my cancer cells. I was sedated but my wife - who was there - I said that when doctors have viewed the cells under the microscope started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer, curable with surgery . I had the surgery and now sto bene.
Questa è stata la volta in cui sono andato più vicino alla morte e spero che sia anche la più vicina per qualche decennio. Essendoci passato attraverso posso parlarvi adesso con un po' più di cognizione di causa di quando la morte era per me solo un concetto astratto e dirvi:
Nessuno vuole morire. Anche le persone che vogliono andare in paradiso non vogliono morire per andarci. E anche che la morte è la destinazione ultima che tutti abbiamo in comune. Nessuno gli è mai sfuggito. Ed è così come deve essere, perché la Morte è con tutta probabilità la più grande invenzione della Vita. E' l'agente di cambiamento della Vita. Spazza via il vecchio per far posto al nuovo. Adesso il nuovo you, but someday not too far away gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's true.
Your time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else's life. Do not be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Do not let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important of all, have the courage to follow your heart and your 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, one of the bibles of my generation. E 'was created by Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and Stewart has brought it to life with his poetic touch. It 'was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It 'was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before there was Google: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions concepts.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and when they arrived at the end of their journey, a final issue. It was more or less half of the seventies and I was your età. Nell'ultima pagina del numero finale c'era una fotografia di una strada di campagna di prima mattina, il tipo di strada dove potreste trovarvi a fare l'autostop se siete dei tipi abbastanza avventurosi. Sotto la foto c'erano le parole: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.", siate affamati, siate folli. Era il loro messaggio di addio. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Io me lo sono sempre augurato per me stesso. E adesso che vi laureate per cominciare una nuova vita, lo auguro a voi.
by marcellosblog
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