The death of Steve Jobs... Part 2

As I said, I was up late last night when the news about Steve Jobs broke, and I watched as the trickle in the first moments become a flood of messages that crashed Twitter, pretty much as I watched. More than realising what legacy he’s left for the world, I started thinking about what his death means to me / for me. I was in the process of looking around to get my mother an iPod for her birthday this month when the news broke, so that felt appropriate, but more than that as I started thinking about the mark he’s left on the world, I realised that along with so many other people, he’s left a mark on me too. I love my iPod (Best.Christmas Present. Ever.) and I listen to it every day on the way to and from work. It’s the single element that makes my commute bearable because I can close my eyes and just enjoy the music.

Like so many others, things feel different when I have a ‘soundtrack’ to my life, and the massive capacity of the iPods allow us to carry so many songs, that we know we’ll always have just the right one for any given moment or mood. Music is so evocative of emotion & memories that being able to take it everywhere with you is a gift of amzing proportions. I still remember seeing my very first iPod back when I was still in Cape Town, in 2006 (I think) and thinking then how much I wanted it. i-Products often generate that acquisitiveness in people,  “oooooo, I want the new shiny thing!” 5 years later I have the teeny tiny iPod nano (5^th / 6^th gen) which I wore almost like a badge of pride this morning. It contrasted rather well with the black turtle next I inadvertently wore today - only remembering afterwards that it was the piece of clothing Steve Jobs was known for.

More than that, his death has made me question my own choices, particularly the line from his commencement speech, which has been much quoted today, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.” Am I really living the life that I want me to have, or am I taking the safe option, the one that while it provides material goods, doesn’t allow me to be the best ‘me’ I can be? (And I can’t believe how clichéd that sounds… In my head it sounded a lot better) So many of us are in jobs or relationships that offer the ‘trappings’ that society as a whole tells us are the hallmarks of happiness. Deep, deep down, we know - This isn’t where I should be, and this isn’t who I should be with. I’m supremely lucky to have one of the best partners and husbands a woman could ask for and I think that only with him and my family have I ever found real happiness. Apart from that, so much of my life has, and is, being spent in pursuit of things that I believed were important (mostly money and stuff).

So now I sit in a position of having too much stuff, and enough money, and still not finding that makes me go “Aha! I am now completely happy with my life”. Instead now that I’m in such a good position, I find myself realising that it hasn’t really made me happy, instead I’m just plodding along, day by day, in the hope that something will happen to me to make it all better, all ok. Instead I need to be the one making that happen for me! I’ve written 3 books (2 whole, 2 half), and never done anything with them - instead waiting for someone to magically ‘find’ me and get them published. I’ve been so passive for so long, that breaking out of that will be hard, but I need to do it for myself, not wait for someone else to pull me out of that. 

I owe it to myself & the man who died yesterday…

The death of Steve Jobs... Part 1

Steve Jobs died last night. Many of us here in the UK woke up this morning to hear that one of the greatest visionaries we’ve known, passed away yesterday. I was actually still up at 1 am, when the first news came through of his death. Because there was so little “official” coverage initially, I thought it might be a really crap hoax, but only a few moments of checking showed it was the truth. It's odd how shell-shocked I felt when I heard, not having personally known the great man, and having issues with some of his policies (flash on iPads for example).

I know it doesn't make any difference to the family suffering his loss, and the company losing his leadership (and aura of amazingness), but he really did leave a legacy that affects all of us. I sit on the tube listening to my iPod and writing this on my iPad, in spite of being a PC fan, which tells you how far his legacy of innovation has spread. I know he didn't invent the portable music device, but he revolutionised it. He didnt invent the tablet, but he revolutionised it. Likewise with the smartphone. In the process of revolutionising these devices that have now become ubiquitous, he put them into all of our hands. As I look around I see those distinctive White earphones in many ears, I see so many people checking their email or playing games on their iPhones. I think that we are the iGeneration, because even if not all of us carry Apple products, we carry products that were inspired by those products (even if the inspiration was just a fear of losing lucrative market share)

I think beyond the mass of technology that is his legacy, Steve Jobs left us all something else. He left us a legacy of belief. Belief that we too could rise above any origins we have to give the world something amazing, whether it be new technology, or thoughtful movies that make you cry without saying a word. He may only have been here for 56 years, but he showed us that its not the conformists and the drones who change the world, it’s those people who stop and think and take a different course, even if it ends up in failure. There have and will continue to be many who are handed the title ‘the next steve jobs’, but honestly I think he’d be happier if he was the only steve jobs (The guy did have a bit of an ego…)

Instead of trying to be next him, I think he’d prefer us to be the next ‘us’. As he said in his commencement speech to Stanford in 2005, “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 look at all the really amazing work that’s being done in our world, most of the time those breakthroughs and revolutions are being created by men & women who truly love their job. They wake up in the morning and look forward to going to work and they use everything they have to create the best ‘product’ or ‘idea’ they possibly can because they believe that much in what they do and they do great work because they love it.