Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

To be great is to be misunderstood.               

                                                                                   -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Thank you, Steve Jobs.

I was driving to work today, puzzling over how to best help students navigate Ralph Waldo Emerson’s language to the themes in his 1841 essay on “Self Reliance,” when I heard a modern interpretation resonate clearly through my radio’s speakers.

An NPR story was memorializing the Apple founder, and included a valuable snippet of his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.

I had the answer I was seeking. So, in class, I stepped back from my usual talk and let Mr. Jobs explain Emerson to my students in his own words:

“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.”

The message of trusting yourself, trusting your instincts and following up on them, seem to resonate through his speech and his life. It’s a message I want to instill in my own kids, which includes my students.

I had been following Jobs’ career for several years, especially his innovations and leadership that led to the resurgence of Apple. But that was just business news. I didn’t know about the challenges he overcame in his youth, and even the challenges he faced when being fired from the company he founded. And how he faced these challenges head on, never giving up, never giving in, but rather persevering and growing even stronger.

Unfortunately, it took his death to make me appreciate his life.

So thank you, Steve Jobs. Thank you for modeling the way we should face adversity, the way we should fight the tempting pulls of conformity and foolhardy consistency, the way we should rely on our selves to be great. Thank you for inspiring me to scrap my initial lesson plan in the face of something better. And thank you for passing on a message from your own youth: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

I think I just gained a new screensaver message.

To check out the speech yourself or for your students, click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA and you can get a text of the speech at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html.

Listen, love it, live it.

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