Stay Hopeful. Stay Passionate.

In 2005, Steve Jobs delivered a speech at Stanford in which he revealed three personal stories to new graduates. The purpose of this paper is to summarize his words.
In the first place, he advised them to “Connect the dots” (Jobs, 2005). Even when we cannot make sense of different situations in life, we must remain confident because everything will fit together in the end. Jobs resorted to an anecdote to illustrate this idea. After dropping university, he felt lost and a disappointment to his parents. He attended a calligraphy course and although he found it fascinating, there was no clear purpose. However, this class was a great help ten years later when he designed the first Macintosh and was able to put his knowledge into practice to create beautiful typography.
In his second story, Jobs encouraged them to learn from loss and to follow their hearts. He explained how he was fired from his own company, Apple, and how he came back due to perseverance, determination, and love for his profession. He finally made reference to his fight against cancer. This experience dawned on him that we have limited time and that we should not use it to fulfill the expectations of others but our own. As a farewell, he borrowed the expression “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” (Brand, 1970s as cited in Jobs, 2005) challenging graduates to rely on their intuition.
Jobs’s three stories make us reflect on the importance of hope in the face of adversity and passion as an engine for freedom. Being faithful to our beliefs and hunches will help us make the best choices in life. No matter what people think; we must not follow the herd. In other words, his point is to invite the audience, through his own anecdotes to go pass life without regrets. He claims that what we experience in life has a sense and it is our duty to discover meaning in that.


References

Stanford. (2008, March 7). Steve Jobs’s 2005 Stanford Commencement Address [Video File]. 
        Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=youtu.be

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