In Memoriam: Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Why has Steve Jobs' demise taken on the dimension of a personal loss to many?

The reason for it may be because through his technological vision - from the Apple I to the iMac, the Ipod, the Iphone and the Ipad - he became a part of our lives. Through all these products..:

1. He allowed us a tactile appreciation of breakthrough design, not just a feast for the eyes, but a memorable encounter of a product, from selection in meticulously planned Apple stores, to the opening of that boxed product ~ the packaging of which was within Jobs' purview to ensure as every bit an experience as the product itself.
2. He gave us a richer experience of music through his Ipods. The quality of the music was clear, we can select all the songs we want, and through it construct the soundtrack for our lives as we go about living it.
3. He made us celebrate life with photos and videos, and he knew we only want our memory of those events captured in photo and video in the best quality possible, and he gave us the tools so we can play with them, from iPhoto, to the iMovies.

In a way, his obsessive preoccupation to detail, to merging 'technology with the liberal arts', to coming up with a masterpiece always -- in a way, it reflects the great reverence Steve Jobs had for man. He believed with an abundance of passion that mankind deserves nothing less than excellence and nothing short of perfection. This philosophy he very much showed in his business, and very well echoed in his own life. Many find precious comfort and clarity in the words he left us, his life's lessons that we will all ponder upon as his instructions for living:

Death as Life's best Invention
“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 is 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 is quite true."

Love What You Do, Do What You Love
“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. 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 until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Connecting the Dots
“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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Follow Your Heart
“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.”

Through his results and his example, we have been inspired and showed a way to the top.
Thank you, Steve Jobs.

Your Job Description is not your Life Prescription

Among the staple questions we tend to ask when wanting to know more about someone we are meeting for the first time is (after getting their name, of course): 'What do you do?' or, a variation, 'Where do you work (and by implication: what do you do there)?'

It's a fair question, and innocuous enough. You might be surprised though that, in certain cultures, being asked that question is frowned upon, thought weird, and a tad bit invasive.

Anyway, in the Philippines, that is rarely a problem. Except perhaps if you are asked that question and you have nothing to answer for it. Why would that be? Here are 7 reasons why one would find oneself grasping for answers to that simple question:

(1) You are unemployed.
Basically, you are a bum. You may just have come off from school and still looking for employment (which you discover is hard to find). Or you just got fired (the company was downsizing; or is outsourcing your job to a third world country) or you had just resigned (the boss was a $@#%; or office politics just ain't your thang; or the free iced tea was making you gain weight). Or you simply can't find a job that you feel you can connect to on a very deep level, you know? :)

(2) You are a stay-at-home mom/dad
You're married (or whatever) and you think that the best use of your time is to be right there with your kids to watch them grow and see to their needs. Of course, this is not a 'job' (you are happy to do it, right?), but as you would say though, It IS a full-time job! But it does seem a little weird to make this your answer when asked what you do because, obviously, the question seems to expect some sort of an employment as a reply. Nevertheless, those who have mustered courage and find no shame in their chosen role, are able to express it with no issue. And that's a good thing! We have come a quarter of a way from 'Oh, I'm just a plain housewife/houseband!' Still many others find themselves queasy saying that.

(3) Your job is confidential/secret.
You don't want the person making small-talk with you suddenly scampering away if you were honest enough to say that you are a gun-for-hire, right? Other than that, your job might just happen to be the classified variety, like a secret agent or a private investigator, or a James Bond-type. So then, what do you say? You'll probably change the topic, make something up, or at least give the other person a warning: "If I tell you, I'm gonna have to kill you."

So go make something up instead!

(4) It's complicated.
That is, your job title does not belong among these professions that need little-to-no elaboration: teacher, salesman, lawyer, doctor, etc. So you're a 'Senior Software Engineer' and, while that easily makes sense to you, apparently it begs a little more expounding, so to avoid that laborious process, just say, "It's kinda like a programmer." And then the question marks in the person's face disappear. (Or so you think.) This is different from having a really simple job whose title is merely embellished, like 'Chief Landscape Engineer' - a fancy name for 'gardener'. Although, yeah, it does complicate it still.

The late Randy Pausch - the Carnegie Mellon professor who before succumbing to pancreatic cancer a few years ago, got famous through his 'The Last Lecture' video which went viral on Youtube - shared in his book 'The Last Lecture' (an offshoot of the viral video) that while he is addressed professionally as Doctor (owing to his Ph.D., not an M.D.), when his mom introduces him to people, she says: "He's a doctor, but NOT the kind that helps people."

That's what happens when job titles are not self-explanatory!

(5) You're a C.O.O.
You know, Child Of Owner; as in, heir to your parent's vast business holdings. All you need to do is turn 21, or wait for them to hand the reins on to you once they think you're ready. If they die, it's still falling on your lap. So, in the meantime, you're sitting on your bum, and... whistling a happy tune.

(6) You're living off of your parent's trust fund.
And therefore, why bother working? Still, when asked what you do, you're at a loss for words. You don't actually want to reveal how wealthy you are; or just how idle (read: lazy) you've become just because your infinite well of riches (a.k.a. your trust fund) is financing all that you'd ever aspire to do or buy.

So in this instance, what do you say? Ah yes, that business you've been thinking about for a long time now.

But of course!

(7) You're into a LOT of things.
You could simply introduce yourself a serial entrepreneur, but you think it's limiting, because your interests are really vast and your endeavors are many. You want to be able to share them all, but the curt question 'What do you do?' does not seem to invite a kilometric and animated monologue. And because they're just so numerous, you don't know where to begin - like all your interests are racing to be uttered first! At the same time, to say that you are doing countless things might invite judgement: Ah, she's a spaghetti-brain! He does not know what he wants! She has ADD!

BUT...Why this shouldn't bother you:
Whatever it is, whatever the reasons may be, for your inability to come up with a respectable response to the plain question of 'What do you do?', it's alright. As they say: No biggie. Answer it anyway, either in the most honest way you can, or in the most creative way you can devise. Leave people to their judgements, and just be who you are.

The truth is, and you'll notice this, the answers to the question evolves as time goes by.

As you move from one job/profession/project to another, from nothing (unemployed/COO) to something (a real job maybe), from something (a stressful, unfulfilling 9-to-5, 6-day-a-week job) to nothing (a life, FINALLY!); as you strive to make something else of your life - maybe something more meaningful to you (a vocation, like priesthood, or NGO work), something legal (gun-for-hire doesn't pay, you'll find out), something healthier (that allows you to get some sleep for a change!), something you actually like (not what your parents like for you - sorry parents!); as you make conscious choices to get your life under control, living life on your own terms and living life to the FULLEST -- you.. will realize that the answer to 'What do you do?' should not be something you allow yourself to define who you are (like a job description) or be restricted by (like a four-cornered cubicle).

After all, what you do, is just one of the innumerable other things that comprise your identity. You don't have to be just one or the other. You can be ALL of it. You can be anything you want to be - now, or later, or all at the same time. No matter, it's all up to you. The moment you begin to believe that is the moment you begin to discover all your possibilities.

See you at the top!

"The simplest questions are the most profound:

Where were you born?

Where is your home?

Where are you going?

What are you doing?

Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change."

~ Richard Bach, Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Book Recommendations:

The Last Lecture

The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

In the Pirates Den: My Life as a Secret Agent

Painfully Rich: J. Paul Getty and His Heirs

Jobs That Matter: Find a Stable, Fulfilling Career in Public Service

Born Rich Documentary

The Joy of Not Working: A Book for the Retired, Unemployed and Overworked

Stay-at-Home Handbook: Advice for Parenting, Finances, Career, Surviving Each Day & Much More

Your Passion Project and the World

First off, what is a Passion Project?

Simply put, it is an undertaking, venture or endeavor that is very personal to you in the sense that it springs from, or honors your passion. It is a personal project, meaning that you yourself jump-started it, but it could also be a task, work, or responsibility given to you or which you volunteered for or maybe just landed on your lap, but which so happens to be aligned with your passion.

A 'passion' is, of course, something that fires your belly, something that inspires you, moves you, excites you - like a cause, or a hobby, or an inclination. And you may get into it for no other reason than to 'scratch an itch', or because 'it is who you are', because 'it comes naturally' like a talent, and also maybe because, like Mt. Everest, 'it is there.'

Here are some examples of people admired for having pursued their passion projects, and for that reason, became very successful. Steve Wozniak who, along with Steve Jobs, founded Apple Computers, was a passionate engineer. He was a creator. He built the first Apple computer by himself, while it took his buddy Steve Jobs' marketing instincts to turn it into something people will want to buy. Both of them, the two Steves, combined their strengths and passions to build what Apple Computers is today. It was their Passion Project.

Read The Pixar Touch, and you'll be awed at, and have a tremendous sense of respect for the brains behind Pixar. They were Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, and yes, Steve Jobs too. But Steve Jobs came later; he was part of the Pixar triumvirate because he believed in the project enough to have funded it in the beginning. But Pixar was truly and originally the passion projects of Ed Carmull (a brilliant computer scientist) and John Lasseter (a prolific animator and master story-teller). Both had a passion for animation and a grand vision for computer generated (CG) animation. Together, they brought traditional hand-drawn animation into the 21st century by developing the hardware and software necessary to make CG animation possible. The result: Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Cars, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and boy-can't-we-wait-what-they-next-have-instore!

Clockwise (from top left): The Passion Project; Mt. Everest; Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II;
John Lasseter; Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

There are so many people in our history who are so closely associated with their passion projects that it defines who they are and the life they have lived. You know it is their passion project without them saying it (or knowing it) with the hours and years they have devoted to it, with the amazing success and reknown they've had with it.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta we know had devoted a good length of her life to the service of the poorest of the poor. Pope John Paul II had been a tireless and an inspiring head of the Catholic Church. We honor them with veneration, and by putting them on the road to sainthood. There are artists (Lea Salonga, Ryan Cayabyab, Michael Jackson), world leaders (Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Aung-san Suu-kyi), thinkers (Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin) and many more - names we will always remember for what they have done for us, for the world.

Their greatest gift is showing us the way: that when you make your passions your mission in life - your 'passion project' - you may get famous, you may get rich, you may become ultra-successful. That is a great benefit to you. But what of your benefit to the world?

The world is enriched, blessed, and changed for the better.



Book Recommendations:
The Pixar Touch (Vintage)
Mother Teresa's Secret Fire: The Encounter That Changed Her Life
The Wisdom of John Paul II: The Pope on Life's Most Vital Questions
The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Of Love, Life and Meaning: Frankl and Vujicic

Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning
Frankl experienced harrowing years in a Nazi Death Camp. From that experience, he developed his Theory of Logotherapy, a psychological theory that focuses on man’s search for a higher meaning in life as his primary motivational force. This is as opposed to Freud’s motivations based on pleasure, and Adler’s on power.

Stripped of everything in the Nazi camps - from clothes, to possessions, to pride and identity - Frankl noticed that man still differed in the way they responded to these harsh situations. He says that the last of freedoms to remain and that may not be stripped away was the freedom to choose one’s attitudes from any given set of circumstances. The environment was not the all-determining factor to man’s reactions – man had free use of his will to meaning, his attitude, to assign meaning and an appropriate reaction to these situations based on this meaning.

From Frankl’s experiences, it can be gleaned that there are no circumstances too terrible to say that we could not help but act the way we did, esp. negatively or harmfully. We always have a choice, he is saying. He supports this in stating that even among prisoners who had experienced similar atrocities, their reactions were different – some managed to remain benevolent, others antagonistic. And that even among the prison guards, there were good ones and bad ones.

“In the concentration camps, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
(Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning)

Life without Limbs: Nick Vujicic
Victor Frankl's story brings to mind Nick Vujicic - that Aussie guy who is pretty much like an ordinary guy - EXCEPT he had no arms and legs, and yet had a bright disposition and has even used his situation to help others; whereas others with similar circumstances would have chosen to give up, withdraw from life, or ask life for pity. He did not let his circumstances dictate the outcome of his life. He travels around the world as an inspirational speaker and his story truly tugs at the heart.

Love, Chemicals and Choice
This also reminds me of that scientific finding about the chemical basis of love, where love is the function of certain chemicals or hormones that act on our physiology. That these hormones last for an average of 4 years. It almost renders us at the mercy of our hormones. But while the studies also show that proof of this is that most divorces happen on the 4th year (when the hormones start to wane), it also suggests that on the 4th year at least, those who remain together have used the power of their will, and no longer just the force of their hormones, to choose to stay with their partners. They have found meaning in the relationship and have chosen to preserve it.

“Man is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining.”
(Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning)

Book Recommendations:
Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life
Man's Search for Meaning
The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy (Meridian)
Recollections: An Autobiography
Viktor Frankl: A Life Worth Living

Memory and Forgetting: Neruda and Jose Rizal

Jose Rizal is well-regarded and much admired for the his mind's sharpness - for how else can one man be the master of many languages and be also a doctor, a carpenter, writer, scientist, artist or geographer? He can clearly originate thoughts, and he must also be expectedly of a brilliant memory.

Pablo Neruda said something striking about memory, that of love being short and forgetting being long. He said that in the very sad poem "Tonight I can write the saddest lines". Neruda's is right, of course, as emotion and memory are tight neighbors in our brain and as such always intertwined. That being the case, then a man like Rizal should obviously all the more have a hard time getting over memories of pain and of the circumstances around that pain. To me, it was probably that pain that shaped the man he is and the things that he would do for the country.

• Rizal's sister Concepcion died at age 3. It is said that this affected Rizal so much, even saying that it was his first time to shed real tears of pain.
• Rizal's mother was unjustly jailed in 1891, upon the persecution of the Spanish, something that greatly distressed Rizal.
• Rizal lost his first love, Leonor Rivera, to the whims of Rivera's parents who wanted her married to an Englishman.
• Rizal pined for Rivera when he was in Europe and also pined for the country that he so loved.

Because of these memories, Rizal became a compassionate but thought-ful man, and he translated his various pain to the creative benefit of his country - through his writings, through his medical practices, his contributions in various fields of study.

Rizal used his memory to populate his writings with stories of abuse and maltreatmeat under the Spanish - to shed light on Spanish activities; with stories of courage, pain and love by Filipinos - to show what Filipinos can do. He put them all in a book knowing that information will be better spread when in writing, and perhaps looking far ahead into the future that others may not forget the challenges that they in his time had confronted.

The issues in Rizal's time still crop up at present, even as we are no longer under any colonial power. Rizal stirs our memory, and through his books prays that we not forget the lessons of history. He had always been atributed the words that encourage one to examine one's past (origins) or else suffer the misfortune of not reaching one's future (destination).

I believe now that Rizal meant for this not just to refer to loving ones roots, not just simply knowing ones history, but putting this knowledge to good use, to letting it fire our bellies that we may all achieve our personal and collective goals, and most esp. our goals for the nation.

"I want to show to those who deprive people the right to love of country, that when we know how to sacrifice ourselves for our duties and convictions, death does not matter if one dies for those one loves – for his country and for others dear to him."

~ Dr. Jose P. Rizal

Book Recommendations:
El Filibusterismo (Penguin Classics)
Noli Me Tangere (Spanish Edition)
The Reign of Greed: Complete English Version of El Filibusterismo (Dodo Press)
The First Filipino, a Biography of José Rizal
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual-Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (Spanish and English Edition)