Celebrating Steve Jobs

When I began imagining this post this morning, I kept thinking of Steve Jobs as the Thomas Edison of our day.

But that's inadequate--not because Jobs was greater than Edison or because Edison was greater than Jobs, but because they are different. Even for all their similarities, they are different.

Yes, we can say Edison (among many others) brought the world into the twentieth century, while Jobs (among many others) brought it into the twenty-first. Yes, both men were relentless in pursuing their lives' passions, in making perfect the many, many gifts that sprang from their amazing brains. Yes, both men enjoyed astonishing careers for which most teachers will tell you they were woefully undereducated. Yes, both men's impatience with lesser minds left ruffled feathers and bruised egos in their respective wakes.

The similarities are so striking that if you believe in reincarnation you might be tempted to think they shared the same soul.

But they weren't the same, and we should remember each on his own merits.

See, I have no desire to be anyone other than who I am, and I am determined to be the very best me I can. Others want to be known as modern-day echoes of our past heroes, but somehow I don't think Steve Jobs was among them.

So I celebrate who he was. One of the great men of our time. A man who reminded us we don't always have to play by the rules. A man who showed us computers and electronic gadgets are really all about us, not the other way around.

A man who showed us the power of dreams is in living them, not waiting for them.

I will miss him, miss the joy and the power his creations and his personal example brought to my life. I will celebrate the power of his dreams. But I will not mourn him. To mourn him would be to miss the point of his life.

Steve Jobs got to live his dream. His dream demanded everything of him, and in return it gave him everything. Fame. Success. Wealth. And from what I read on his face in the last few months of his life, it gave him contentment. Perhaps even peace. If that isn't a full life, a life well lived, what is? What is there to mourn at the end of such a life?

He lived his dream every day for the best part of fifty-six years.

We should all be so lucky.

HN