Protective armour, killer weapons, keen eyes, toned physique, leadership and so on are a few things that come to our minds when we think of a warrior. But people swinging swords and fighting in battlefields are not the only warriors. People attempting to surmount all the hardships in their daily lives and striving to succeed are warriors too.
Born to an unmarried couple in 1955, little did anyone know then, that this boy was going to bring about a technological revolution! In 1976, the birth of Apple made it easier to use a computer, which merely marked the beginning of a new era. A series of discovery followed that. Mackintosh in 1984, iPod in 2001, iPhone in 2007, iPad in 2010 and 2011 was a black year; the legend passed away.
He is both a technological giant and an inspirational speaker. This man’s commencement address at Stanford stands as a testimony to this. A bunch of inspiring quotes, always leaving us awestruck, was what the entire speech comprised of.
“Even people who want to go heaven do not want to die to get there, yet, death is the common destination we all share”, he spoke of death this way. He smiled at his impending death when he came to know that he was inflicted by deadly pancreatic cancer. So why was he a warrior? Right from his birth till death, everything about his life was so challenging.
He won many battles, for instance, a legal battle against the parenthood of Lisa brought with it many things, but the battle against death was something he couldn’t win. If there is a scale for dedication, it should probably be named after him. Imagine a person becoming a fruitarian just to avoid the odour of his body, so that the bathing time could be saved and be spent to innovate more. That was the kind of dedication he showed.
His employees never called him kind, but that didn’t make him cruel either. Initially, when they started to work under him, all of them felt like pieces of clay and he moulded them into the best versions of themselves. He was a keen observer. Once, he complained to Google that it had some problem with the yellow shades in the ‘O’ of ‘GOOGLE’, which stunned everyone.
He didn’t drop out without a reason. He followed his passion and started working hard. A decade went by. Then, he was fired from his own company. He decided to start anew and his love for Apple pulled him back faster. This time he came up with a fresh seed for Mackintosh which dispelled the boredom that people faced with the computer UI before.
His leadership, his lifelong battle, his keen observation and his unmatched dedication made him a warrior and a hero for many budding entrepreneurs. His father was Islamic and mother was American. He was brought up by a lawyer and later he embraced Buddhism, indeed he led a secular life.
When I hear people saying that learning and mastering a programming language could only fetch jobs, I only think of Jobs who was a technical giant who knew absolutely no coding, which is again a mystery. His quotes have seemed magical to me a million plus times and I become inarticulate to words when I try to explain it.
