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 gotten ever to graduate college. 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 left school at Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a decline in the last 18 months or so before he actually resigned. Why should I drop?
Started before I was born. Biological mother was young, graduate student is married, and decided to put me up for adoption. I felt strongly that it should adopt the first of college graduates, so everything was all set for me to adopt at birth by a lawyer and his wife. But when she decided to get out emerged in the last minute that they really want a girl. Happened and my parents, who were on the waiting list, call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby, do you want him?" They said: "Of course." Biological mother found out later that my mother had not graduated from college and that my father had not graduated from high school. Refused to sign the final adoption papers. It yielded only a few months later when my parents promised that I would not go to college someday.
And 17 years later I did not go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost expensive as Stanford, and spent all my savings from working-class parents on education. After six months, I could not see the value in it. I had no idea what I want to do in my life and I have no idea how college going to help me figure it out. Here, you spend all this money and my parents had saved their entire lives. I decided to leave and the confidence that all work out OK. Was very frightening at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The moment I left school I could stop taking the required classes that do not interest me and begin dropping in on those that look interesting.
Not all romantic. I came back because I did not have the bedroom, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms and bottles Coke for the deposits of 5 cents to buy food, and I would walk 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And turned a lot of what faltered in following my curiosity and intuition to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Offered Reed College at that time was probably the best teaching calligraphy in the country. Throughout the campus and a beautiful each poster, every label on every drawer, calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and did not have to take regular classes, I decided to take the class online to find out how to do so. I've learned about slavery and the slave San typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes a great large print. Was beautiful, historical and art hidden in a way that science can not capture, and found it wonderful.
It was not something even the hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, and each time came for me. We design everything in the Mac. Was the first computer with beautiful printing. If I had not fallen in one session on this in college, did not have a Mac multiple lines and lines relatively far apart. Since Mac and Windows versions only, it is likely that no personal computer would be for them. If I had not dropped out, I did not fell into this category on the line, and the personal computer may not have the wonderful printing they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear look back ten years later.
Again, you can not connect the dots looking forward, and 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, behavior, and whatever. This approach has not let me down, and it 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 only two of us in a garage to a company with $ 2 billion with more than 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year ago, and I had just turned 30. Then I got to the fire. How can I get disconnected from the company that 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 because we eventually diverge and there was a fall. By the Board of Directors of the company when we have done with him. On 30 and you're out. And very publicly. What has been the focus of my whole life went big, and it was devastating.
I really do not know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had left the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - you've dropped the stick 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'm thinking of escape from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - and I still loved what I did. The evolution of events at Apple had not changed one bit. I have rejected, but I was still in love. So I decided to start again.
I do not see at the time, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me ever. Replaced by the weight of the success of the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. Edit me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.
During the next five years, started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who became my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated film, Toy Story, and now is the most successful animation studio in the world. I came back in remarkable turn of events, Apple bought Next, Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm sure none of this would have happened if it had not been fired from Apple. Was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Do not lose faith. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. This is true for your business 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. The only way to do a great job is to love what you do. If you have not found it yet, keep looking. Do not 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 with the passage of time on them. So keep looking until you find it. Do not settle.
My third story is about death.
I read when I was 17, which went quote something like this: "If you live each day as if your last, someday you will certainly be right" to have made an impression to me, and since then, over the last 33 years, we have I looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today the last day of my life, and I want to do what I'm about to do today?" Whenever the answer is "no" for days too many in a row, and I know I need to change something.
Remember 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 really important. Remember that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid falling into the trap of thinking you have nothing to lose. I was 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 in the pancreas. I did not even know what a pancreas was. The doctors said to me this was definitely the type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live for a period of three to six months. 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. Which means to say your farewell.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where the telescope stuck 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 he looks at 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 decades. Having lived through it, I can tell you now this for sure a little bit more than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven do not want to die to get there. After the death is the destination we all share. It has survived from anyone ever. This is as it should be, because Death is very likely that one of the best invention of life. An agent for change of life. It paves the outside of the old to make way for new ones. Now the new is you, but one day not too long from now, will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be very serious, but it was quite true.
Your time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else's life. Can not be trapped by the belief - that live with the results of other people's thinking. Do not let the noise of others' opinions to withhold your inner voice. More importantly, we have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. One way or another, they already know what you really 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. Was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, came to life with a touch of poetry. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so all taken with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. Was sort of like Google in the form of a book in paperback, 35 years before Google came along: the ideal, and packed with neat tools and great notions.
Development of Stewart and his team of several cases of Whole Earth Catalog, and then when she was done, she has put the final. The mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of the issue was the final image of the road in the country early this morning, the kind you might find yourself riding in the car if you venture to do so. And beneath the words: "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish". Had a farewell message as they signed off. Stay hungry. Remain ignorant. I have always wished that for myself. Now, you go out to start all over again, and I wish that for you.
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