There have been so many stories shared about Mr. Jobs; how he and Steve Wozniak began Apple; how Jobs got fired from the company he created, which spurred Jobs to create NeXt computers; and how he built Pixar into the company we've all come to love.
Of course, Mr. Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford has also made the rounds on the internet, and in conversation, quite a bit these last two days. If you haven't yet read or watched Mr. Jobs' Stanford address from 2005, we highly recommend you do so now.
For all you may have seen, read, and heard though, there's just... one more thing... at least one more story about Mr. Jobs that we're fairly sure that most of you haven't heard yet.
There's a story told among some of Apple's most veteran fans, those who remember Apple before the Mac, who know that Lisa isn't just a girl's name, and who were once called 'Apple evangelists - like our web guru, Shawn. The story goes that, shortly after Steve Jobs had dropped out of college, he went to India and got lost looking for a wise man. After some searching and stumbling through somewhat rural towns in India, Jobs had yet to find the guru - but, in a strange twist of fate, the wise man found him instead.
When the wise man 'discovered' Jobs, he ran up to the young American and screamed, "You!" !" - not in a hateful way, or the way you'd call out a thief, but in the way someone would exclaim if they had just found the one person they'd been looking for all their life.
This wise Indian yogi put his hands on Jobs' head - which Steve thought odd, but went along with anyway. After a few moments, the wise man stepped back and told Jobs, "Someday, you will change the world."
And he did.
As Jobs himself once said, the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
As we head into a weekend filled with travel, P.O. Pears burgers at the UNL Dairy Store, and maybe even checking out a few Occupy rallies, we hope you'll remember something else Mr. Jobs once said, in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams.
When Williams asked Jobs to think of where he would fit, in the great pantheon of American inventors, Jobs tried to beg off, not wanting to truly answer the question. Williams pushed the legacy query though - and Jobs' answer is one we hope sticks with you as much as it has with us.
Steve said, "When we [humans] finish doing something that we're really proud of, we want to get onto the next thing. So, you know, I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful and not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next."
We hope that whatever is next for you turns out pretty good too.
"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 other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs
