“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently - they’re not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Steve Jobs
Radio Four wakes me up every weekday morning at six so the first thing I hear is the headline of the day. On October 6th, the headline was that Apple founder Steve Jobs was dead at fifty six. Fifty six is way to young to be checking out but the news shocked and saddened me more than I had expected.
What followed was an outpouring of grief from the public. I visited the Covent Garden Apple Store in London on the 6th to find an understated board with a picture of Jobs placed outside the front. People were gathering, talking and laying flowers.
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| Not taken with an I-Phone.... dammit |
From the news websites, I saw that there were similar happenings around the world as people gathered at their local Apple emporium to hold I-Phone lit vigils and mourn a man that they had never met. Steve Jobs was an inventor, a brilliant salesman, a businessman and a multi millionaire - but what had he done to deserve such reverence?
Some people talk about the cult of Apple, and I can understand that. I am writing this blog on a Macbook Pro and my husband is surgically attached to his I-Phone. But I am not one of the people who queue up to be the first to hand over their cash for the latest version of the I-Pad. That the products and the company have changed the way we live in the West is undeniable but what appealed to me about Steve was that he clearly loved what he did.
Lots of criticism has been leveled against Steve Jobs and Apple as a company. The factories where they produce their shiny gadgets have a massive child-labour problem. Steve Jobs didn’t give enough to charity for some people. These are valid points for discussion, of course. But Steve Jobs never painted himself as a humanitarian. It wasn’t what he wanted to be. Steve Jobs was a tech-guy, a computer man, a nerd. He believed in what he did. And in that, he reached for the sky.
Steve Jobs loved what he did for a living. He always loved it. You have only to watch the many presentations on Youtube to see that this was a man driven by passion and belief that what he was doing was important and brilliant. He said in an interview in the Wall Street Journal in 1993 “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me... Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful... that’s what matters to me”.
How many of us can say that the job that drags us from our duvets every morning means that much to us? How many of us can look at what Steve Jobs achieved and the sheer joy he took from it and not feel envious? What we can learn from him is that life is brief and life is precious. Spend it doing what you love and it will be a life worth living.
“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.” Steve Jobs
It's definately a lucky thing to do something that drives you to keep going every day. But I also think we should make that happen, happyness in my opinion is a decision, it doesn't mean it's easy, but it's definately worth it.
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