The pain of becoming yourself

Today I want to tell you three stories

from my life. That's it. No big deal.

Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the

dots. I dropped out of Reed College

after the first 6 months, but then

stayed around as a dropin for another 18

months or so before I really quit. So

why' I drop out? It started before I was

born. My biological mother was a young

unwed graduate student and she decided

to put me up for adoption. She felt very

strongly that I should be adopted by

college graduates. So everything was all

set for me to be adopted at birth by a

lawyer and his wife except that when I

popped out, they decided at the last

minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting

list, got a call in the middle of the

night asking, "We've got an unexpected

baby boy. Do you want him? They said,

"Of course." My biological mother found

out later that my mother had never

graduated from college and that my

father had never graduated from high

school. She refused to sign the final

adoption papers. She only relented a few

months later when my parents promised

that I would go to college. This was the

start in my life. And 17 years later, I

did go to college. But I naively chose a

college that was almost as expensive as

Stanford. And all of my workingclass

parents' savings were being spent on my

college tuition. After 6 months, I

couldn't see the value in it. I had no

idea what I wanted to do with my life

and no idea how college was going to

help me figure it out. And here I was

spending all the money my parents had

saved their entire life. So, I decided

to drop out and trust that it would all

work out okay. It was pretty scary at

the time, but looking back, it was one

of the best decisions I ever made. The

minute I dropped out, I could stop

taking the required classes that didn't

interest me and begin dropping in on the

ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a

dorm room, so I slept on the floor and

friends rooms. I returned coke bottles

for the 5-cent deposits to buy food

with. And I would walk the seven miles

across town every Sunday night to get

one good meal a week at the Hari Krishna

temple. I loved it. And much of what I

stumbled into by following my curiosity

and intuition turned out to be priceless

later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered

perhaps the best calligraphy instruction

in the country. Throughout the campus,

every poster, every label on every

drawer was beautifully

handcalliggraphed.

Because I had dropped out and didn't

have to take the normal classes, I

decided to take a calligraphy class to

learn how to do this. I learned about

serif and sand serif type faces, about

varying the amount of space between

different letter combinations, about

what makes great typography great.

It was beautiful, historical,

artistically subtle in a way that

science can't capture and I found it

fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any

practical application in my life. But 10

years later, when we were designing the

first Macintosh computer, it all came

back to me and we designed it all into

the Mac. It was the first computer with

beautiful typography. If I had never

dropped in on that single course in

college, the Mac would have never had

multiple type faces or proportionally

spaced fonts. And since Windows just

copied the Mac, it's likely that no

personal computer would have them.

[Music]

If I had never dropped out, I would have

never dropped in on that calligraphy

class. And personal computers might not

have the wonderful typography that they

do. Of course, it was impossible to

connect the dots looking forward when I

was in college, but it was very, very

clear looking backwards 10 years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots

looking forward. You can only connect

them looking backwards. So, you have to

trust that the dots will somehow connect

in your future. You have to trust in

something, your gut, destiny, life,

karma, whatever. Because believing that

the dots will connect down the road will

give you the confidence to follow your

heart even when it leads you off the

well-worn path and that will make all

the difference. My second story is about

love and loss.

I was lucky. I found what I love to do

early in life. W and I started Apple in

my parents' garage when I was 20. We

worked hard and in 10 years, Apple had

grown from just the two of us in a

garage into a $2 billion company with

over 4,000 employees. We just released

our finest creation, the Macintosh, a

year earlier, and I just turned 30.

And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you

started?

Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone

who I thought was very talented to run

the company with me. And for the first

year or so, things went well. But then

our visions of the future began to

diverge and eventually we had a falling

out. When we did, our board of directors

sided with him. And so at 30, I was out

and very publicly out. What had been the

focus of my entire adult life was gone

and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a

few months. I felt that I had let the

previous generation of entrepreneurs

down, that I had dropped the baton as it

was being passed to me. I met with David

Packard and Bob Noise and tried to

apologize for screwing up so badly. I

was a very public failure and I even

thought about running away from the

valley. But something slowly began to

dawn on me. I still loved what I did.

The turn of events at Apple had not

changed that one bit. I'd been rejected,

but I was still in love. And so I

decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out

that getting fired from Apple was the

best thing that could have ever happened

to me. The heaviness of being successful

was replaced by the lightness of being a

beginner again, less sure about

everything. It freed me to enter one of

the most creative periods of my life.

During the next 5 years, I started a

company named Next, another company

named Pixar, and fell in love with an

amazing woman who would become my wife.

Pixar went on to create the world's

first computer animated feature film,

Toy Story, and is now the most

successful animation studio in the

world. In a remarkable turn of events,

Apple bought Next, and I returned to

Apple. And the technology we developed

at Next is at the heart of Apple's

current renaissance. And Loren and I

have a wonderful family together. I'm

pretty sure none of this would have

happened if I hadn't been fired from

Apple. It was awful tasting medicine,

but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life's going to hit you in the

head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm

convinced that the only thing that kept

me going was that I loved what I did.

You've got to find what you love. And

that is as true for work as it is for

your lovers. Your work is going to fill

a large part of your life. And the only

way to be truly satisfied is to do what

you believe is great work. And the only

way to do great work is to love what you

do. If you haven't found it yet, keep

looking and don't settle. As with all

matters of the heart, you'll know when

you find it. And like any great

relationship, it just gets better and

better as the years roll on. So keep

looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went

something like, "If you live each day as

if it was your last, someday you'll most

certainly be right."

It made an impression on me. And since

then, for the past 33 years, I've looked

in the mirror every morning and asked

myself, if today were the last day of my

life, would I want to do what I am about

to do today? And whenever the answer has

been no for too many days in a row, I

know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is

the most important tool I've ever

encountered to help me make the big

choices in life. Because almost

everything, all external expectations,

all pride, all fear of embarrassment or

failure, these things just fall away in

the face of death, leaving only what is

truly important. Remembering that you

are going to die is the best way I know

to avoid the trap of thinking you have

something to lose. You are already

naked. There is no reason not to follow

your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with

cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the

morning and it clearly showed a tumor on

my pancreas. I didn't even know what a

pancreas was. The doctors told me this

was almost certainly a type of cancer

that is incurable and that I should

expect to live no longer than 3 to 6

months. My doctor advised me to go home

and get my affairs in order, which is

doctor's code for prepare to die. It

means to try and tell your kids

everything

you thought you'd have the next 10 years

to tell them in just a few months. It

means to make sure everything is

buttoned up so that it will be as easy

as possible for your family. It means to

say your goodbyes.

I live with that diagnosis all day.

Later that evening, I had a biopsy where

they stuck an endoscope down my throat,

through my stomach, and into my

intestines, put a needle into my

pancreas, and got a few cells from the

tumor. I was sedated, but my wife who

was there told me that when they viewed

the cells under a microscope, the doctor

started crying because it turned out to

be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer

that is curable with surgery. I had the

surgery and thankfully I'm fine now.

[Applause]

This was the closest I've been to facing

death, and I hope it's the closest I get

for a few more decades. Having lived

through it, I can now say this to you

with a bit more certainty than when

death was a useful but purely

intellectual concept. No one wants to

die. Even people who want to go to

heaven don't want to die to get there.

And yet, death is the destination we all

share. No one has ever escaped it. And

that is as it should be because death is

very likely the single best invention of

life. It's life's change agent. It

clears out the old to make way for the

new. Right now, the new is you. But

someday, not too long from now, you will

gradually become the old and be cleared

away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's

quite true.

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.

When I was young, there was an amazing

publication called the Whole Earth

Catalog, which was one of the Bibles of

my generation. It was created by a

fellow named Stuart Brand not far from

here in Menllo Park. And he brought it

to life with his poetic touch. This was

in the late60s before personal computers

and desktop publishing. So, it was all

made with typewriters, scissors, and

Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like

Google in paperback form 35 years before

Google came along. It was idealistic,

overflowing with neat tools and great

notions.

Stuart and his team put out several

issues of the Whole Earth catalog. And

then when it had run its course, they

put out a final issue. It was the mid

1970s and I was your age.

On the back cover of their final issue

was a photograph of an early morning

country road, the kind you might find

yourself hitchhiking on if you were so

adventurous.

Beneath it were the words, "Stay hungry,

stay foolish." It was their farewell

message as they signed off, "Stay

hungry, stay foolish." And I have always

wished that for myself.

And now as you graduate to begin a new,

I wish that for you. Stay hungry. Stay

foolish. Thank you all very much.