What Steve Jobs Says to Me

These scripts keep reverberating in my head. They are from the late Apple CEO's Commencement Address to the 2005 graduating class at Stanford:

....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.

I never had the patience, the prudence, the courage, and the persistence to work out what it was that I was called to do. You can bet your booty I am energetically pursuing the reasons why not in other pages. But looking back, I can say that my life's track is emblematic of settling for. I never had the courage or the cleverness, or the consciousness to recognize clues as to what my life's work should be. There may have been moments where I glimpsed journalism or the law; perhaps out of cowardice of not wanting to invest two years in my garage, as did Jobs, I quickly moved on and changed the backdrops. Whatever work I did, I never paid my dues, professionally.

So, my life's path shows no great work. All I have to show is great fun. Recreational fun. I do not feel I have exactly man-uped (or manned-up?).

That has to change in my current and future life phase. Jobs tells me,

..... 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. ... Stay hungry. Stay foolish.....

Yes, I have to follow my heart. Consult the spark with in me that contains my newly-minted life mission and discriminate in my daily minute-by-minute life between meaningful choices and meaningless defaults.

Integrity.