Your time is limited – Steve Jobs

As a tribute to Steve Jobs, I would like to transcribe an excerpt from his Standford speech. Despite the differences, this speech reminded me of CG Jung’s thoughts on the Path of Each One

The whole speech is very interesting, especially the final passages where he reflects on life and the fact that we don’t have all the time in the world. That is, our time in this world is limited.

He says:

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like this: “If you live each day as if it were your last, one day it really will be your last.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I’ve looked in the mirror every morning and asked, “If today were my last day, what would I want to do today?”

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make big decisions. Because almost everything—external expectations, pride, fear of embarrassment or failure—falls away in death, leaving only what’s just important. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know of to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There’s no reason not to follow your heart.

A year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. It was 7:30 am and I had a picture that clearly showed a tumor in the pancreas. I did not even know what a pancreas was.

The doctors told me that it was certainly an incurable form of cancer, and that I shouldn’t expect to live more than three to six weeks. My doctor advised me to go home and pack my things—which is doctors’ code for “prepare to die.” It means trying to tell your kids in a few months everything you thought you had the next 10 years to say. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Then, in the afternoon, I had a biopsy, where they threaded an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines. They put a needle in my pancreas and took some cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, said that when the doctors looked at the cells under a microscope, they started crying. It was a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that could be cured with surgery. I had surgery and I’m fine.

That was the closest I’ve ever been to facing death and I hope it’s the closest I’ll get for decades to come. Having gone through that, I can now say to you with a little more certainty than when death was just an abstract concept: Nobody wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.

Still, death is the fate we all share. No one has ever managed to escape. And that’s how it should be, because death is very likely the main invention of life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. At that moment, the new is you. But someday, not too far off, you will gradually become an old man and be swept away. I’m sorry for being so dramatic, but this is the truth.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Don’t get trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s lives.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most importantly: have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you really want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was little, one of the bibles of my generation was the Whole Earth Catalog🇧🇷 It was created by a guy named Stewart Brand in Menlo Park, not far from here. He brought him back to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60’s, before computers and paging programs. So everything was done with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras.

It was like Google in book form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and full of good tools and notions. Stewart and his team published several editions of Whole Earth Catalog and when it had accomplished its mission, they released a final issue. That was in the mid-70s and I was your age.

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