thank you I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of
the finest universities in the world
truth be told I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've
ever gotten to a college graduation
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 six months but then stayed around as a
drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit so why did 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 working-class parents savings were
being spent on my college tuition after six 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 in 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 Reid 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 hand calligraphed 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 sans-serif typefaces
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 typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts and since
windows just copied the Mac it's likely that no personal computer
have them 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 ten 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 loved to do early in life woz and I started Apple in
my parent's 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 two billion dollar 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 Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so
badly I was a very public fail 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've 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 five 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 it next is
at the heart of Apple's current Renaissance and Laureen 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 sometime life 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 this 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 what 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 three to six months
my doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order which is doctors
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 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 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 some day 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 Bible's of my generation it was created by a fellow
named Stuart brand not far from here in Menlo Park and he brought it to life
with his poetic touch this was in the late 60s before personal computers and
desktop publishing so it was all made with typewriters scissors and Polaroid
cameras it was sort of like Google and 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 anew I wish that for you stay hungry stay foolish thank you
all very much