Steve Jobs on Life Lessons

I'm sure that blogs across the blogosphere have tapped out on blogs about Steve Jobs.  But I have to add one more to cyberspace.

Someone posted this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc  on Facebook.  It is Steve Jobs giving the commencement speech at Stanford University in 1995 I believe.  I almost didn't watch it but I'm SO glad that I did.  Basically Steve Jobs tells three stories of his life.  Each story teaches a valuable lesson...but I think that the biggest take away from all of them is that everything in life happens for a reason.  I have always believed this to be true, but to hear the specific details of things that happened in his life (which at the time seemed incredulous to him and most listeners), which if they had not happened, computers and digital films as we know them today might not exist just really struck me.  I would love to recap all the stories here (and almost did) but I really think it's worth spending 10 minutes to listen to the man himself talk about how his first adoptive parents didn't want him because he was a boy (and then to think about how it was the financial state of his second set of adoptive parents which led him to quit school, take a calligraphy class, and eventually use that knowledge to create the visual you see today as you read this blog), about how getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to him (meeting his wife, starting another company), and about how his sickness caused him to re-evaluate his life (and consequently quit his job and start Pixar studios).

Really makes you take a look at your life and realize that everything that has happened to you, good or bad, has led you to EXACTLY where you are today.  Everything really does happen for a reason (including getting fired!).  :-)