“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.
I came home crying from work today because I thought I just couldn’t get it. My mom, trying to cheer me up, told me I had the same birthday as Steve Jobs.
I didn’t believe her.
I knew I could leech on the rays of the pseudo-glory that I shared the same birthday as Einstein, but Steve Jobs? I would have known earlier.
It turns out my mom was right. It didn’t change my day, but it did bring me comfort to realize, that our struggles in life are never for nothing. And that well, great things in life are often borne out of great failures.
I had made another mistake in the day. I was feeling like a misfit, as I always have since my adolescence. But listening to Steve Job’s speech and reading his biography made me realize one thing:
” Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.“
It made me realize, that for all the rain that is pouring in on me right now, this is not what I will settle for. And whatever rain is pouring into your life right now, should not be what you settle for either.
While I know going through medical school is something God has planned for my life, I am also increasingly convinced, this day-in-day-out of hospital ward work is not what my giftings were made for.
There is something more. There is something greater out there where this point in time in my life will constitute just one dot of a greater picture that I dare not imagine but long to see.
In his speech to Stanford University at their 2005 Commencement Ceremony, Steve Jobs talked about connecting the dots. We only only connect the dots backwards, and so it is important to realize while we may not understand everything now, it may do us good to know that someday, all these dots will map up to form a big picture.
Translating this to what I understand about God, I know someday He will show me the reason for all of this when He connects all the dots together. Surely this temporary suffering has a reason, for teaching me humility and servitude and teamwork.
Our failures are important. Our quirks, essential.
Someday, all this will make sense and we’ll make a difference to this world.
February 24th.
