How to Live Before You Die by Steve Jobs

 Introduction :

"How to Live Before You Die" is an inspiring speech delivered at the commencement of  Stanford University in the year 2005  by Steve Jobs, an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc. and one of the pioneers of microcomputer technology. Steve Jobs uses autobiographical anecdotes in a tripartite structure to communicate a massage of resilience and personal integrity. The three life- related stories were told to motivate the people who were at the commencement. Three stories are:-

1. About Connecting the Dots:

2. About Love and Loss:

3. About Death:

Summary :

1. His First Story about Connecting the Dots:

His first story is about various facts that are linked with his life. He has expressed about his birth, adoption and his struggles. According to him, his biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student who decided to put him up for adoption before his birth. She wished her baby to be adopted by college graduate parents. A lawyer and his wife became ready to adopt at first. But the lawyer's family changed their mind to adopt him after his birth because they wanted to adopt a baby girl. Then, he was adopted by another family. His biological mother refused to sign the final adoption papers as she found out that the parents were never graduated from high school and college. His biological mother only relented  a few months later when the parents promised that  that they would send him college someday.

Steve went to an expensive college at the age of 17. His parents' all savings were being spent on his college tuition. After six months, he dropped out of Reed college as he couldn't see the value in it. He had no idea how college was going to help on the further steps of his life. He failed to make meaning of his life. He didn't get the idea of what he wanted to do in his life. Looking back after dropping out it was one of the best decision he had ever made.

( He slept on the floor in friend 's rooms and had one good meal a week. During those days, he faced a lot of hardships. While pursuing his curiosity and intuition, he stumbled many times but his hardships turned out to be priceless later on.)

Reed College at that time offered the best calligraphy instruction in the country. He started taking classes of his interest that is  calligraphy. Calligraphy was quite popular during those days. He learnt serif and sans serif typefaces. For him, the course of calligraphy turned out to be a kind of boon. After 10 years, with the help of his friend Woz, he was able to design the first Macintosh Computer with beautiful typography. He used his knowledge of calligraphy and his skills when he designed the first Macintosh computer.

He realized everything related to dots or steps and their connections in his life. When he looked backwards, he got the idea that how different dots kept on connecting themselves to support him to reach his real destination. His decisions of dropping college and starting course of his interest, his experiences, hardships, gut  and trust in karma or destiny etc. moved along with his steps like different dots. Finally, all these dots got connected and made him successful.

2. About Love and Loss :

His second story is related about the biggest loss of his life. He and his friend Woz started Apple in his parents´ garage. After ten years Apple had grown into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. They had just released their finest creation  - the Macintosh.  According to him, a year later of it, at the age of thirty, he was fired from his own company by the board of directors. He tried to apologise to David Packard and Bob Noyce for his deed. He was publicly failure. He didn't lose his hope. His love for his tasks helped him again. His knowledge, skills and love supported and led him towards the height again in the tech world. He was able to establish his new company NeXT and the world-famous Animation studio called Pixar which created world-famous animated feature film named 'Toy Story.' Here, he has advised all the people not to settle down their search in the matter of their desired tasks. According to him people should love their works which they do and seek their desirable works. They shouldn't settle down in their search of best works.

3. About Death 

In his third story, Steve Jobs has related his impression from the quote " If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you´ll most certainly be right."  He had read it at the age of 17. Remembering that he´d be dead soon is  the most important tool he had ever encountered to help him make the big choices in life. Then he told his experience of his sickness due to pancreatic cancer at the age of forty-nine. At first the doctors told him that he had short time to live. But after his biopsy, the doctors found that his pancreatic cancer was curable with surgery. He got rid of his pancreatic tumour after surgery.

During that time, he experienced his death closely. No one wants to die but the destination we all share is the death. He got the idea about the concept of death. According to him, death is life's greatest invention. Everyone has to share this intellectual concept. Death is life's change agent. It clears out the old and paves way for the new. He continued his task again with full enthusiastic feelings. For him, our time is limited, so we shouldn’t waste it. He has adviced all his audiences to stay hungry and stay foolish. According to him, we should always be eager to know and achieve important things in our life. We should try to do a new thing in our life with different thoughts. Protecting our inner voice from others’ opinions, we should have the courage to follow our heart and intuition.