Steve Job's Biography

I just finished reading Steve Jobs's biography. It was even better than I thought it was going to be. He is definitely someone I wish I had met but it will never happen because he's gone.

I've been thinking a lot about death and legacy. What will I leave behind when I'm gone? What will people have to say about me? Will I accomplish everything I hope to? I'm not trying to change the world, but I do want to change the course of my family's history and help others do the same along the way. However, I find myself unable to get out of my comfort zone to do what I need to do.

I remember reading the following quote from his Stanford Commencement speech the day after his death:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

I still think about this quote every day wondering when I'm going to muster the courage to just say screw it and get it done already. I'm surrounded by people who are too scared to step outside of their comfort zones to do something, anything to make a difference in their lives and the lives of their families. How many generations of their descendants will remember who they were?

I can only know small tidbits of information about my maternal grandmother's father. I loved my maternal grandmother, but there isn't much of anything to really remember her by. She married a man who didn't want a family and with six children, lived in poverty because my grandfather choose to spend his paycheck chasing women.

I don't want to pass down a legacy of poverty and poor choices. Which leaves me to ask how much of her history will I choose to share with my children, if I have children. I want do much better in life because I don't want to be forgotten, especially by my descendants.

Steve Jobs won't have to worry about that. The whole world will remember him. His children's children's children will know who he was or at lease his accomplishments. Those are some big shoes to fill.

I'm not trying to change the world but I want to make a difference, even if it is on a small scale.