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[Applause]
thank you I'm honored to be with you
today for your commencement from one of
the finest universities in the world
[Applause]
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 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
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'd 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 gonna 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 gonna 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
[Applause]
my third story is about depth 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 all 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 ten 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
[Applause]
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
[Applause]
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