Every year around this time I look for inspirational speeches, presentations, and other words of advice for graduating seniors. Last year, for example, I pointed to these three graduation speeches. This year I do not have a formal speech to point to, but I stumbled on this short and simple yet profound piece by Steve Jobs below. This clip is from a PBS documentary called "One Last Thing" which aired last November. This interview clip dates back to a time in the '90s, before he rejoined Apple. The words are very simple and uncomplicated...and true. Life is short and ephemeral, an yet we can have an impact. We can each make a contribution. Our job is to figure out what that contribution is. (The clip on Youtube.)
Life: "You can change it, you can influence it..."
Here is the transcript for the video clip. There are some good quotable lines in there.
"When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
"The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
"I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” — Steve Jobs
Insanely great.
Posted by: panny | June 14, 2012 at 05:05 PM
Excellent post about steve jobs. I think i must have overlooked this wonderful video. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Jess tham | June 15, 2012 at 04:24 PM
Here's one for your consideration: http://youtu.be/ikAb-NYkseI
Neil Gaiman - Inspirational Commencement Speech at the University of the Arts 2012
Posted by: Patweber | June 16, 2012 at 04:55 AM
Awesome stuff.
@Patweber - that Gaiman speech is great too; but what's better is the illustrated version...
http://zenpencils.com/comic/50-neil-gaiman-make-good-art/#comment-11037
Neil himself tweeted how much he loved it...
Posted by: Trevoraungthan | June 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM
It's so popular theme nowadays... Steve was genius and it's a pity that we began to spaek about him only after his death.
Posted by: http://stdtests.us/ | June 18, 2012 at 07:48 PM
The day I "met" Steve Jobs my life changed, just because he showed me that live the life in a different way is possible, and I'm really "living my life".
Posted by: Manu | July 09, 2012 at 05:54 AM
Why we didn't think about him when he was alive and why he became to inspire everyone after his death???
Posted by: http://stdtests.us/blog/ | July 10, 2012 at 05:05 PM