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."
- Steve Jobs, Stanford's 2005 Commencement address
You know, I never really thought about death. Like really thought about death until Steve Jobs died. I know this may sound bad but even though I hear about popular figures dying, it doesn't really phase me and I just go on with what I was doing for that day. I felt as though it was too soon for him to die. He just stepped down from his position in Apple in August but, maybe, he expected death would be soon since his health was deteriorating. I didn't know Steve Jobs but I felt such a loss, a sadness, somewhere in me when I heard he died. I don't even know, it just brought tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I don't know what any of you guys think but I think that Steve Jobs played a very significant role in changing the popularity of technology and portable devices. Steve Jobs decided to live his own life and not be in anyone else's shadow. He wanted to get his ideas out and that is what he did.
I don't know why but his death hit so close to home for me. Maybe it's because I own so many freaking Apple products. But his death has brought about me thinking about death. Where do people go after they die? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Or is it just blankness? What is the afterlife? Are different types of people sent to different place? Criminals, victims, the wrongly accused, genii? And then it made me think...
Where are you, Steve Jobs? I hope you're enjoying it. And...thank you.
"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.
