Live your own life (It's not that long)

Steve Jobs delivered the commencement address to the 2005 grads of Stanford University. He spoke of his unwed mother arranging for him to be adopted by married college grads, but when they learned after his birth that he was a boy, they withdrew, and he was given to non-college grads. He then spoke of how he had dropped out of college after 6 months to save his parents their life savings, but "dropped in" on classes he liked for the next 18 months. He spoke of creating Apple Computer and then being fired from the company he had co-founded. And then he told of starting 2 new companies, NEXT and Pixar, returning to Apple, and then being told pancreatic cancer would end his life within 6 months.

He summarized the 15 minute address by telling the grads they will only be able to "connect the dots" of their life backwards in retrospect, and that all they do will aid that process. He told them to love what they do and only do that which they love -- that they should live their own life -- because it isn't really that long a period of time.

Here's the video of his address...



..and here's the text of his recent March 2010 speech at Lucile Packard's Children's Hospital about how California must pass a law to encourage more people to be organ donors: How I Almost Died