Stay Hungry; Stay Foolish
There are times that I forget. I forget that I want to be, I’m going to be, one of the crazy ones that changes the world. I forget not to settle. There are times that I let the noise of others’ opinions drown out my own inner voice. I forget that somehow, somewhere, within I already know what I want to become. I forget to be fearless and shun embarrassment and failure.
But a man who loved what he did, loved his life and brought to the world some of the most beautiful and creative products it has even seen died today. I don’t have a Mac and I don’t have an iPad and even my iPod died a year ago and I have yet to replace it. Still, I recognize that this man changed the world, changed music, changed movies, changed (and will continue to change) journalism, changed our culture and all because he woke up every morning, looked in the mirror and carpe-diemed the crap out of that day. He woke up every morning knowing that he was going to love what he did and who he came home to.
All of us aspire for that. No, not the inordinate success that comes with being the co-founder of Apple (though it wouldn’t hurt), but the simple happiness of loving our jobs and our lives. It’s not just luck that makes that happen. It’s, as Henry David Thoreau put it, learning to “reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”
This morning, my phone wasn’t plugged into its charger, my alarm didn’t go off and I overslept. Tomorrow I will wake up, look in the mirror and ask myself: ”If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
Like everyone else out in the world today, I saw the news that Steve Jobs died this evening. I saw it in my work email – something about a news alert – and I saw it explode on Twitter and Facebook. Like the many millions, I wondered how to process this. How did this affect me? This man that I didn’t know, but somehow found his way into all of our lives. I told a friend earlier tonight that I want to feel inspired again. Watching Steve Jobs address the the graduating class at Stanford in 2005, I got the message: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
Now I remember.
