textos o música, que ayuden a inspirar
el espíritu.
INVITADOS: 1."Paul Potts"
2."Playing For Change".
3."Steve Jobs"
4."Alejandro Magno"
5. "Luis Santiago"
6. "Amparo Ochoa"
7. "Facundo Cabral"
8. "Mel Gibson"
This space is dedicated to insert texts or music to help
inspire spirit. Guest: (Down in English Language)
1. INVITADO: "PAUL POTTS "
¡QUE NADIE DUERMA !
¡QUE NADIE DUERMA!
MI MISTERIO LO LLEVO
OCULTO EN MI INTERIOR....
Y AUNQUE MI NOMBRE NADIE LO SABRA.
¡NO ! ¡NO!
¡HARE QUE SE VAYA LA NOCHE !
¡QUE SE OCULTEN LAS ESTRELLAS!
¡QUE SE OCULTEN LAS ESTRELLAS!
¡AL ALBA......VENCERE!
¡VENCERE ! ¡VENCERE!
2. INVITADOS: Playing For Change/ Song Around The World
"Stand By Me"
3.INVITADO: STEVE JOBS
DISCURSO QUE STEVE JOBS, CEO DE APPLE COMPUTER Y DE PIXAR
ANIMATION STUDIOS, DICTO EL 12 DE JUNIO DE 2005 EN LA
CEREMONIA DE GRADUACION DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE STANFORD
Tengo el honor de estar hoy aquí con vosotros en vuestro comienzo en una de las mejores universidades del mundo. La verdad sea dicha, yo nunca me gradué.
A decir verdad, esto es lo más cerca que jamás he estado de una graduación universitaria.
Hoy os quiero contar tres historias de mi vida. Nada especial. Sólo tres historias.
La primera historia versa sobre "conectar los puntos".
Dejé la Universidad de Reed tras los seis primeros meses, pero después seguí vagando por allí otros 18 meses, más o menos, antes de dejarlo del todo. Entonces, ¿por qué lo dejé?
Comenzó antes de que yo naciera.
Mi madre biológica era una estudiante joven y soltera, y decidió darme en adopción. Ella tenía muy claro que quienes me adoptaran tendrían que ser titulados universitarios, de modo que todo se preparó para que fuese adoptado al nacer por un abogado y su mujer.
Solo que cuando yo nací decidieron en el último momento que lo que de verdad querían era una niña.
Así que mis padres, que estaban en lista de espera, recibieron una llamada a medianoche preguntando:
“Tenemos un niño no esperado; ¿lo queréis?”
“Por supuesto”, dijeron ellos.
Mi madre biológica se enteró de que mi madre no tenía titulación universitaria, y que mi padre ni siquiera había terminado el bachillerato, así que se negó a firmar los documentos de adopción. Sólo cedió, meses más tarde, cuando mis padres prometieron que algún día yo iría a la universidad.
Y 17 años más tarde fui a la universidad. Pero de forma descuidada elegí una universidad que era casi tan cara como Stanford, y todos los ahorros de mis padres, de clase trabajadora, los estaba gastando en mi matrícula.
Después de seis meses, no le veía propósito alguno. No tenía idea de qué quería hacer con mi vida, y menos aún de cómo la universidad me iba a ayudar a averiguarlo.
Y me estaba gastando todos los ahorros que mis padres habían conseguido a lo largo de su vida. Así que decidí dejarlo, y confiar en que las cosas saldrían bien.
En su momento me dio miedo, pero en retrospectiva fue una de las mejores decisiones que nunca haya tomado.
En el momento en que lo dejé, ya no fui más a las clases obligatorias que no me interesaban y comencé a meterme en las que parecían interesantes. No era idílico. No tenía dormitorio, así que dormía en el suelo de las habitaciones de mis amigos, devolvía botellas de Coca Cola por los 5 céntimos del envase para conseguir dinero para comer, y caminaba más de 10 Km los domingos por la noche para comer bien una vez por semana en el templo de los Hare Krishna.
Me encantaba.
Y muchas cosas con las que me fui topando al seguir mi curiosidad e intuición resultaron no tener precio más adelante.
Os daré un ejemplo.
En aquella época la Universidad de Reed ofrecía la que quizá fuese la mejor formación en caligrafía del país. En todas partes del campus, todos los póster, todas las etiquetas de todos los cajones, estaban bellamente caligrafiadas a mano.
Como ya no estaba matriculado y no tenía clases obligatorias, decidí atender al curso de caligrafía para aprender cómo se hacía.
Aprendí cosas sobre el serif y tipografías sans serif, sobre los espacios variables entre letras, sobre qué hace realmente grande a una gran tipografía.
Era sutilmente bello, histórica y artísticamente, de una forma que la ciencia no puede capturar, y lo encontré fascinante. Nada de esto tenía ni la más mínima esperanza de aplicación práctica en mi vida. Pero diez años más tarde, cuando estábamos diseñando el primer ordenador Macintosh, todo eso volvió a mí.
Y diseñamos el Mac con eso en su esencia. Fue el primer ordenador con tipografías bellas. Si nunca me hubiera dejado caer por aquél curso concreto en la universidad, el Mac jamás habría tenido múltiples tipografías, ni caracteres con espaciado proporcional. Y como Windows no hizo más que copiar el Mac, es probable que ningún ordenador personal los tuviera ahora. Si nunca hubiera decidido dejarlo, no habría entrado en esa clase de caligrafía y los ordenadores personales no tendrían la maravillosa tipografía que poseen.
Por supuesto, era imposible conectar los puntos mirando hacia el futuro cuando estaba en clase, pero fue muy, muy claro al mirar atrás diez años más tarde.
Lo diré otra vez: no puedes conectar los puntos hacia adelante, sólo puedes hacerlo hacia atrás. Así que tenéis que confiar en que los puntos se conectarán alguna vez en el futuro. Tienes que confiar en algo, tu instinto, el destino, la vida, el karma, lo que sea.
Esta forma de actuar nunca me ha dejado tirado, y ha marcado la diferencia en mi vida.
Mi segunda historia es sobre el amor y la pérdida.
Tuve suerte — supe pronto en mi vida qué era lo que más deseaba hacer. Woz y yo creamos Apple en la cochera de mis padres cuando tenía 20 años. Trabajamos mucho, y en diez años Apple creció de ser sólo nosotros dos a ser una compañía valorada en 2 mil millones de dólares y 4.000 empleados.
Hacía justo un año que habíamos lanzado nuestra mejor creación — el Macintosh — un año antes, y hacía poco que había cumplido los 30.
Y me despidieron.
¿Cómo te pueden echar de la empresa que tú has creado?
Bueno, mientras Apple crecía contratamos a alguien que yo creía muy capacitado para llevar la compañía junto a mí, y durante el primer año, más o menos, las cosas fueron bien. Pero luego nuestra perspectiva del futuro comenzó a ser distinta y finalmente nos apartamos completamente. Cuando eso pasó, nuestra Junta Directiva se puso de su parte.
Así que a los 30 estaba fuera. Y de forma muy notoria.
Lo que había sido el centro de toda mi vida adulta se había ido y fue devastador.
Realmente no supe qué hacer durante algunos meses. Sentía que había dado de lado a la anterior generación de emprendedores, que había soltado el testigo en el momento en que me lo pasaban. Me reuní con David Packard [de HP] y Bob Noyce [Intel], e intenté disculparme por haberlo fastidiado tanto. Fue un fracaso muy notorio, e incluso pensé en huir del valle [Silicon Valley].
Pero algo comenzó a abrirse paso en mí — aún amaba lo que hacía. El resultado de los acontecimientos en Apple no había cambiado eso ni un ápice. Había sido rechazado, pero aún estaba enamorado. Así que decidí comenzar de nuevo.
No lo vi así entonces, pero resultó ser que el que me echaran de Apple fue lo mejor que jamás me pudo haber pasado.
Había cambiado el peso del éxito por la ligereza de ser de nuevo un principiante, menos seguro de las cosas. Me liberó para entrar en uno de los periodos más creativos de mi vida. Durante los siguientes cinco años, creé una empresa llamada NeXT, otra llamada Pixar, y me enamoré de una mujer asombrosa que se convertiría después en mi esposa.
Pixar llegó a crear el primer largometraje animado por ordenador, Toy Story, y es ahora el estudio de animación más exitoso del mundo. En un notable giro de los acontecimientos, Apple compró NeXT, yo regresé a Apple y la tecnología que desarrollamos en NeXT es el corazón del actual renacimiento de Apple. Y Laurene y yo tenemos una maravillosa familia.
Estoy bastante seguro de que nada de esto habría ocurrido si no me hubieran echado de Apple. Creo que fue una medicina horrible, pero supongo que el paciente la necesitaba. A veces, la vida te da en la cabeza con un ladrillo. No perdáis la fe. Estoy convencido de que la única cosa que me mantuvo en marcha fue mi amor por lo que hacía. Tenéis que encontrar qué es lo que amáis. Y esto vale tanto para vuestro trabajo como para vuestros amantes.
El trabajo va a llenar gran parte de vuestra vida, y la única forma de estar realmente satisfecho es hacer lo que consideréis un trabajo genial. Y la única forma de tener un trabajo genial es amar lo que hagáis. Si aún no lo habéis encontrado, seguid buscando.
No os conforméis.
Como en todo lo que tiene que ver con el corazón, lo sabréis cuando lo hayáis encontrado. Y como en todas las relaciones geniales, las cosas mejoran y mejoran según pasan los años. Así que seguid buscando hasta que lo encontréis.
No os conforméis.
Mi tercera historia es sobre la muerte.
Cuando tenía 17 años, leí una cita que decía algo como: “Si vives cada día como si fuera el último, algún día tendrás razón”. Me marcó, y desde entonces, durante los últimos 33 años, cada mañana me he mirado en el espejo y me he preguntado: “Si hoy fuese el último día de mi vida, ¿querría hacer lo que voy a hacer hoy?” Y si la respuesta era “No” durante demasiados días seguidos, sabía que necesitaba cambiar algo.
Recordar que voy a morir pronto es la herramienta más importante que haya encontrado para ayudarme a tomar las grandes decisiones de mi vida.
Porque prácticamente todo, las expectativas de los demás, el orgullo, el miedo al ridículo o al fracaso se desvanece frente a la muerte, dejando sólo lo que es verdaderamente importante.
Recordar que vas a morir es la mejor forma que conozco de evitar la trampa de pensar que tienes algo que perder. Ya estás desnudo. No hay razón para no seguir tu corazón.
Hace casi un año me diagnosticaron cáncer.
Me hicieron un chequeo a las 7:30 de la mañana, y mostraba claramente un tumor en el páncreas. Ni siquiera sabía qué era el páncreas. Los médicos me dijeron que era prácticamente seguro un tipo de cáncer incurable y que mi esperanza de vida sería de tres a seis meses. Mi médico me aconsejó que me fuese a casa y dejara zanjados mis asuntos, forma médica de decir: prepárate a morir.
Significa intentar decirle a tus hijos en unos pocos meses lo que ibas a decirles en diez años. Significa asegurarte de que todo queda atado y bien atado, para que sea tan fácil como sea posible para tu familia. Significa decir adiós.
Viví todo un día con ese diagnóstico.
Luego, a última hora de la tarde, me hicieron una biopsia, metiéndome un endoscopio por la garganta, a través del estómago y el duodeno, pincharon el páncreas con una aguja para obtener algunas células del tumor. Yo estaba sedado, pero mi esposa, que estaba allí, me dijo que cuando vio las células al microscopio el médico comenzó a llorar porque resultó ser una forma muy rara de cáncer pancreático que se puede curar con cirugía.
Me operaron, y ahora estoy bien. Esto es lo más cerca que he estado de la muerte, y espero que sea lo más cerca que esté de ella durante algunas décadas más. Habiendo vivido esto, ahora os puedo decir esto con más certeza que cuando la muerte era un concepto útil, pero puramente intelectual:
Nadie quiere morir.
Ni siquiera la gente que quiere ir al cielo quiere morir para llegar allí. Y sin embargo la muerte es el destino que todos compartimos. Nadie ha escapado de ella. Y así tiene que ser, porque la Muerte es posiblemente el mejor invento de la Vida. Es el agente de cambio de la Vida. Retira lo viejo para hacer sitio a lo nuevo.
Ahora mismo lo nuevo sois vosotros, pero dentro de no demasiado tiempo, de forma gradual, os iréis convirtiendo en lo viejo, y seréis apartados. Siento ser tan dramático, pero es bastante cierto. Vuestro tiempo es limitado, así que no lo gastéis viviendo la vida de otro.
No os dejéis atrapar por el dogma que es vivir según los resultados del pensamiento de otros.
No dejéis que el ruido de las opiniones de los demás ahogue vuestra propia voz interior.
Y lo más importante, tened el coraje de seguir a vuestro corazón y vuestra intuición.
De algún modo ellos ya saben lo que tú realmente quieres ser.
Todo lo demás es secundario.
Cuando era joven, había una publicación asombrosa llamada The Whole Earth Catalog [Catálogo de toda la Tierra], una de las biblias de mi generación. La creó un tipo llamado Stewart Brand no lejos de aquí, en Menlo Park y la trajo a la vida con su toque poético. Eran los últimos años 60, antes de los ordenadores personales y la autoedición, así que se hacía con máquinas de escribir, tijeras, y cámaras Polaroid. Era como Google con tapas de cartulina, 35 años de que llegara Google, era idealista, y rebosaba de herramientas claras y grandes conceptos. Stewart y su equipo sacaron varios números del The Whole Earth Catalog, y cuando llegó su momento, sacaron un último número.
Fue a mediados de los 70, y yo tenía vuestra edad.
En la contraportada de su último número había una fotografía de una carretera por el campo a primera hora de la mañana, la clase de carretera en la que podrías encontrarte haciendo autoestop si sois aventureros. Bajo ella estaban las palabras:
“Sigue hambriento. Sigue alocado”.
Era su último mensaje de despedida. Sigue hambriento. Sigue alocado.
Y siempre he deseado eso para mí. Y ahora, cuando os graduáis para comenzar de nuevo, os deseo eso a vosotros.
Seguid hambrientos. Seguid alocados.
Muchísimas gracias a todos.
4.INVITADO: ALEJANDRO MAGNO
"LOS TRES ÚLTIMOS DESEOS DE
ALEJANDRO MAGNO"
Encontrándose al borde de la muerte, Alejandro Magno, el más grande de todos los grandes, convocó a sus generales y les comunicó sus tres últimos deseos:
Que su ataúd fuese llevado en hombros y transportado por los propios médicos de la época.
Que los tesoros que había conquistado (plata, oro, piedras preciosas… ), fueran esparcidos
por el camino hasta su tumba, y…
Que sus manos quedaran balanceándose en el aire, fuera del ataúd, y a la vista de todos.
Uno de sus generales, asombrado por tan insólitos deseos, le preguntó a Alejandro cuáles
eran sus razones.
Alejandro contestó al general:
Quiero que los más eminentes médicos carguen mi ataúd para así mostrar que ellos
no tienen, ante la muerte, el poder de curar.
Quiero que el suelo sea cubierto por mis tesoros para que todos puedan ver que los
bienes materiales aquí conquistados, aquí permanecen.
Quiero que mis manos se balanceen al viento, para que las personas puedan ver que
vinimos con las manos vacías, y con las manos vacías partimos.
5.INVITADO: LUIS SANTIAGO
Interpreta:" Yo Soy"
"Yo Soy"
Yo he cuidado tus pasos con celo
y en todo momento me acuerdo de ti
he peleado todas tus batallas
todos tus gigantes los venciste en mi.
Caminantes por valles de sombra
sin temor a muerte porque estuve ahí
te he guardado de la misma forma
que he guarde mi siervo al que llamas David.
Frente al mar en medio del desierto
tu te viste muerto yo vencí por ti,
abrí el mar para que tu pasaras
y a tus enemigos los vistes morir
Coro:
Yo soy el alfa y omega
principio y fin
El lirio de los valles
El que ha velado por ti
No dará tu pie al resbaladero
no he de dormir
guardaré tu entrada y tu salida hasta el fin.
En tu casa no falta alimento
ni existen sedientos pues te bendecí
soy lumbrera para tu camino
si te sientes débil hay fuerzas en mi
He llevado tus enfermedades tus debilidades
tus pecados mil entregué la vida de mi Hijo
al que tanto yo amaba y lo hice por ti.
En su día sonarán trompetas
y a mi pueblo amado yo vere venir
En la nube con todos los santos
rumbo a aquella tierra que les prometí.
Coro:
Yo soy el alfa y omega
principio y fin
El lirio de los valles
El que ha velado por ti
No dará tu pie al resbaladero
no he de dormir
guardaré tu entrada y tu salida hasta el fin.
y en todo momento me acuerdo de ti
he peleado todas tus batallas
todos tus gigantes los venciste en mi.
Caminantes por valles de sombra
sin temor a muerte porque estuve ahí
te he guardado de la misma forma
que he guarde mi siervo al que llamas David.
Frente al mar en medio del desierto
tu te viste muerto yo vencí por ti,
abrí el mar para que tu pasaras
y a tus enemigos los vistes morir
Coro:
Yo soy el alfa y omega
principio y fin
El lirio de los valles
El que ha velado por ti
No dará tu pie al resbaladero
no he de dormir
guardaré tu entrada y tu salida hasta el fin.
En tu casa no falta alimento
ni existen sedientos pues te bendecí
soy lumbrera para tu camino
si te sientes débil hay fuerzas en mi
He llevado tus enfermedades tus debilidades
tus pecados mil entregué la vida de mi Hijo
al que tanto yo amaba y lo hice por ti.
En su día sonarán trompetas
y a mi pueblo amado yo vere venir
En la nube con todos los santos
rumbo a aquella tierra que les prometí.
Coro:
Yo soy el alfa y omega
principio y fin
El lirio de los valles
El que ha velado por ti
No dará tu pie al resbaladero
no he de dormir
guardaré tu entrada y tu salida hasta el fin.
6. INVITADA: "AMPARO OCHOA"
Interpreta: "Mujer"
7. INVITADO: " FACUNDO CABRAL"
Interpreta:" Canción de Cuna "
8.INVITADO: "MEL GIBSON"
Film: "La Pasión de Cristo "
SPEECH THAT STEVE JOBS, CEO of Apple Computer
and Pixar ANIMATION STUDIOS, delivered on 12 JUNE 2005 IN THEGRADUATION CEREMONY OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY
I have the honor to be here today with you in your start in one of the best universities worldwide.
Truth be told, I never graduated. Indeed, this is the closest I've ever been to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. Nothing special. Just three stories.
The first story is about "connecting the dots."
I left Reed College after the first six months, but kept roaming around another 18 months or less
before stopping altogether. So why let it? It started before I was born. My biological mother was
a young student and single, and decided to put me up for adoption. She was very clear that those who would
take me to be university graduates, so everything was prepared to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Just when I was born in the last minute decided that what they really wanted was a girl.
So my parents, who were on the waiting list, got a call at midnight asking "We expected a child, do you want?" "Of course," they said. My biological mother found out that my mother had a university
degree, and that my father had never graduated from high school, so he refused to sign the adoption
papers. Only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday
go to college. And 17 years later I went to college. But carelessly chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all the savings of my parents, working class, was spent on my college
tuition. After six months, I could not see any purpose. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, let alone how college was going to help me find out. And I was spending all of the money my parents had throughout his life. So I decided to quit, and hope that things would work out. At the time I was scared,
but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. At the time I left, I did not go over the required classes that did not interest me and I started to get into ones that looked interesting. It was
idyllic. I had no room, so I slept on the floor of the rooms of my friends returned coke bottles for 5 cents
of the pack to get money to eat, and walked over 10 km on Sunday night to eat well once week at the
Hare Krishna temple of. I loved it. And many things that I stumbled into by following my curiosity and
intuition turned out to be priceless later on. I will give you an example. At that time, Reed College was offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster,
every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphy. No longer were enrolled and had no
required classes, I decided to attend the course in calligraphy to learn how to do it. I learned about
serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the spaces between letters, about what makes a really
great typography great. It was subtly beautiful, historical, artistically in a way that science can not
capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even the slightest hope of practical application
in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it al
l came back to me.And we designed the Mac with that in its essence. It was the first computer with
beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in one particular course in college, the Mac would have
never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced characters. And since Windows did not simply
copy the Mac, its likely that no personal computer had them now. If I had never decided to quit,
would not have entered this calligraphy class and personal computers do not have the wonderful
typography that they possess. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward
when I was in class, but it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
I'll say it again: you can not connect the dots forward, you can only back. So you have to trust
that the dots will connect sometime in the future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny,
life, karma, whatever. This approach has never left me lying, and has made a difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I learned early in life what he loved to do. Woz and I started Apple in my parents
garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in ten years Apple had grown from just the two o
us in a company valued at 2 billion dollars and 4,000 employees. Just a year ago we released
our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year before, and I had just turned 30.And 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 during the first year or so
things went well. But then our visions of the future began to be different and we finally falling out.
When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. 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. Really do not
know what to do for a few months. I felt I had set aside the previous generation of entrepreneurs,
who had dropped the baton at the time I was spent. I met with David Packard [HP] and Bob
Noyce [Intel], and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. It was a very public failure, and
even thought about running away from the valley [Silicon Valley].But something began to dawn
on me - I still loved what I did. The result of events at Apple had not changed that one iota.
Had been rejected, but still was in love. So I decided to start over. I do not see it then, but it
turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best I ever could have happened. He changed
the weight of success by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about things. It freed
me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. Over 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 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, I retuned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT
is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family. I'm pretty
sure none of this would have happened if I had not been fired from Apple. I think it was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hands you over the head with a brick.
Do not lose faith. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
You have to find what you love. And this is as true for your work to your lovers.The work will fill a
large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do that you consider a great job.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you have not already found, keep
looking.Do not conform. As with everything that has to do with the heart, you'll know when you have
found. And like any great relationship, things get better and better as the years pass. So keep looking
until you find it. Do not conform.
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 were your last, someday you'll have reason." I checked, and since then, over the past 33 years, every morning
I looked in the mirror and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do
what I do today?" If the answer was "No" for too many days in a row, I knew I needed 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 all expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or
failure fades before death, leaving only what is truly important. Remember you will 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. Almost a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I did a check at 7:30
in the morning, and clearly showed a tumor in the pancreas. Did not even know what a pancreas was.
The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of incurable cancer and that my life expectancy
would be three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs trenching, medical
way of saying, prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids in a few months what you would say in
ten years. Means to make sure everything is well tied and bound, to make it as easy as possible for
your family. It means saying goodbye.I spent a whole day with that diagnosis.Then, late in the afternoon,
I had a biopsy, getting an endoscope down the throat through the stomach and duodenum, pancreas
pricked with a needle to get some tumor cells. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there told me that
when he saw the cells under a microscope the doctor began to mourn because he turned out to be a
very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.I had the surgery and I'm fine. This is the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest you get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, now I can tell you this with more certainty than when death was a useful concept, but purely
intellectual .Nobody wants to die.Even people who want to go to heaven do not want to die to get
there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And so it must be,
because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is the agent of change in life.
Remove the old to make room for new.Right now the new is you, but someday not too long, gradually,
I will go becoming old, and you will be apart. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else's life. Do not be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of the thinking of others.Do not let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.
And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you really want to be.Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog [Catalogue of all the earth], one of the bibles of my generation.
It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park and brought to life with
his poetic touch. It was the late 60's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along, it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and when the time came, took one last issue. It was the mid 70's, and I was your age.On the back of its latest issue had a picture of a country road early in the morning, the kind of road you might find yourself hitchhiking if you are adventurous. Beneath it were the words:
"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. " It was his last message of farewell. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
And I always wished that for myself. And now, when you graduáis to start again, I wish that for you.
Follow hungry. Follow crazy. Thank you all.
4.INVITADO: ALEXANDER THE GREAT
"THE LAST THREE WISHES ALEXANDER THE GREAT "
Finding the brink of death, Alexander the Great, the greatest of the greats, he summoned his generals and
told them his last three wishes: That the coffin was carried on the shoulders and carried by the
doctors themselves at the time. The treasures he had conquered (silver, gold, precious stones ...),
were scattered the way to his grave, and ...That your hands are dangling out of the coffin, and the view.
One of his generals, shocked by such unusual desires, Alexander asked what where his reasons.
Alexander said the general: I want the most eminent physicians and load my coffin to show that they not
have, before death, the power to heal. I want the ground to be covered by my treasures for all
to see that tangible here won here remain. I want my hands to swing in the wind, so that people
can see that came with empty hands and we left empty handed.
and Pixar ANIMATION STUDIOS, delivered on 12 JUNE 2005 IN THEGRADUATION CEREMONY OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY
I have the honor to be here today with you in your start in one of the best universities worldwide.
Truth be told, I never graduated. Indeed, this is the closest I've ever been to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. Nothing special. Just three stories.
The first story is about "connecting the dots."
I left Reed College after the first six months, but kept roaming around another 18 months or less
before stopping altogether. So why let it? It started before I was born. My biological mother was
a young student and single, and decided to put me up for adoption. She was very clear that those who would
take me to be university graduates, so everything was prepared to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Just when I was born in the last minute decided that what they really wanted was a girl.
So my parents, who were on the waiting list, got a call at midnight asking "We expected a child, do you want?" "Of course," they said. My biological mother found out that my mother had a university
degree, and that my father had never graduated from high school, so he refused to sign the adoption
papers. Only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday
go to college. And 17 years later I went to college. But carelessly chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all the savings of my parents, working class, was spent on my college
tuition. After six months, I could not see any purpose. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, let alone how college was going to help me find out. And I was spending all of the money my parents had throughout his life. So I decided to quit, and hope that things would work out. At the time I was scared,
but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. At the time I left, I did not go over the required classes that did not interest me and I started to get into ones that looked interesting. It was
idyllic. I had no room, so I slept on the floor of the rooms of my friends returned coke bottles for 5 cents
of the pack to get money to eat, and walked over 10 km on Sunday night to eat well once week at the
Hare Krishna temple of. I loved it. And many things that I stumbled into by following my curiosity and
intuition turned out to be priceless later on. I will give you an example. At that time, Reed College was offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster,
every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphy. No longer were enrolled and had no
required classes, I decided to attend the course in calligraphy to learn how to do it. I learned about
serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the spaces between letters, about what makes a really
great typography great. It was subtly beautiful, historical, artistically in a way that science can not
capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even the slightest hope of practical application
in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it al
l came back to me.And we designed the Mac with that in its essence. It was the first computer with
beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in one particular course in college, the Mac would have
never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced characters. And since Windows did not simply
copy the Mac, its likely that no personal computer had them now. If I had never decided to quit,
would not have entered this calligraphy class and personal computers do not have the wonderful
typography that they possess. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward
when I was in class, but it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
I'll say it again: you can not connect the dots forward, you can only back. So you have to trust
that the dots will connect sometime in the future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny,
life, karma, whatever. This approach has never left me lying, and has made a difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I learned early in life what he loved to do. Woz and I started Apple in my parents
garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in ten years Apple had grown from just the two o
us in a company valued at 2 billion dollars and 4,000 employees. Just a year ago we released
our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year before, and I had just turned 30.And 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 during the first year or so
things went well. But then our visions of the future began to be different and we finally falling out.
When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. 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. Really do not
know what to do for a few months. I felt I had set aside the previous generation of entrepreneurs,
who had dropped the baton at the time I was spent. I met with David Packard [HP] and Bob
Noyce [Intel], and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. It was a very public failure, and
even thought about running away from the valley [Silicon Valley].But something began to dawn
on me - I still loved what I did. The result of events at Apple had not changed that one iota.
Had been rejected, but still was in love. So I decided to start over. I do not see it then, but it
turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best I ever could have happened. He changed
the weight of success by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about things. It freed
me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. Over 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 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, I retuned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT
is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family. I'm pretty
sure none of this would have happened if I had not been fired from Apple. I think it was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hands you over the head with a brick.
Do not lose faith. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
You have to find what you love. And this is as true for your work to your lovers.The work will fill a
large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do that you consider a great job.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you have not already found, keep
looking.Do not conform. As with everything that has to do with the heart, you'll know when you have
found. And like any great relationship, things get better and better as the years pass. So keep looking
until you find it. Do not conform.
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 were your last, someday you'll have reason." I checked, and since then, over the past 33 years, every morning
I looked in the mirror and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do
what I do today?" If the answer was "No" for too many days in a row, I knew I needed 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 all expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or
failure fades before death, leaving only what is truly important. Remember you will 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. Almost a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I did a check at 7:30
in the morning, and clearly showed a tumor in the pancreas. Did not even know what a pancreas was.
The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of incurable cancer and that my life expectancy
would be three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs trenching, medical
way of saying, prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids in a few months what you would say in
ten years. Means to make sure everything is well tied and bound, to make it as easy as possible for
your family. It means saying goodbye.I spent a whole day with that diagnosis.Then, late in the afternoon,
I had a biopsy, getting an endoscope down the throat through the stomach and duodenum, pancreas
pricked with a needle to get some tumor cells. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there told me that
when he saw the cells under a microscope the doctor began to mourn because he turned out to be a
very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.I had the surgery and I'm fine. This is the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest you get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, now I can tell you this with more certainty than when death was a useful concept, but purely
intellectual .Nobody wants to die.Even people who want to go to heaven do not want to die to get
there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And so it must be,
because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is the agent of change in life.
Remove the old to make room for new.Right now the new is you, but someday not too long, gradually,
I will go becoming old, and you will be apart. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so do not waste it living someone else's life. Do not be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of the thinking of others.Do not let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.
And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you really want to be.Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog [Catalogue of all the earth], one of the bibles of my generation.
It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park and brought to life with
his poetic touch. It was the late 60's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along, it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and when the time came, took one last issue. It was the mid 70's, and I was your age.On the back of its latest issue had a picture of a country road early in the morning, the kind of road you might find yourself hitchhiking if you are adventurous. Beneath it were the words:
"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. " It was his last message of farewell. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
And I always wished that for myself. And now, when you graduáis to start again, I wish that for you.
Follow hungry. Follow crazy. Thank you all.
4.INVITADO: ALEXANDER THE GREAT
"THE LAST THREE WISHES ALEXANDER THE GREAT "
Finding the brink of death, Alexander the Great, the greatest of the greats, he summoned his generals and
told them his last three wishes: That the coffin was carried on the shoulders and carried by the
doctors themselves at the time. The treasures he had conquered (silver, gold, precious stones ...),
were scattered the way to his grave, and ...That your hands are dangling out of the coffin, and the view.
One of his generals, shocked by such unusual desires, Alexander asked what where his reasons.
Alexander said the general: I want the most eminent physicians and load my coffin to show that they not
have, before death, the power to heal. I want the ground to be covered by my treasures for all
to see that tangible here won here remain. I want my hands to swing in the wind, so that people
can see that came with empty hands and we left empty handed.
