Follow Your Heart
This week the world lost a creative genius, Steve Jobs.
To tell the truth, I didn’t know a lot about the man or his role in today’s electronic world . . . until I happened across a speech he’d given to a Stanford University graduating class.
No, he didn’t attend Stanford. In fact, in what I’ve learned was his trademark, unassuming manner, he told the seniors that addressing them was the closest he’d ever gotten to graduating from college. Steve Jobs was a college drop-out.
Without the slightest trace of regret, he indicated it had been an economic decision. But that it turned out to be one of the smartest things he’d ever done. Why? Because it “freed” him to “drop in” on other, non-required classes--as he searched for what he wanted to do with his life.
He followed his heart. And look how that turned out.
Think Apple. Think personal computers. Think iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac, and iTunes.
Jobs, in that aforementioned speech, said that during his self-described “drop-in” period he slept on the floor of a friend’s dorm room, collected cans and bottles for money to buy food, and walked seven miles across town every Sunday for a hot meal.
Today, in memory, the media is calling Jobs a “visionary.” But he would probably dispute that label since he said that it’s impossible to look into the future and “connect the dots.” That it is only when a person looks back that he or she can see how the dots connect.
Think computer mouse and computer animation. Think electronic ink. Think electronic books….
Thank you, Steve Jobs, for following your heart.
by Ramona Butler
(Think Border Heat, now available in electronic format from www.ChampagneBooks.com/)
