When Steve Jobs Died
It was four o’clock on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. I had just walked home from school and was already immersed in what I love—writing code, crafting pixels, and obsessing over my latest project’s emergent user experience. I was in the final stages of a web application project that I was working on with a friend I’d met online. Twitter was open in the background on my computer, which in retrospect, was probably not the best idea given how susceptible I am to distraction. “Steve Jobs is dead,” proclaimed a tweet as it scrolled past my screen. “Rumor, please be a rumor,” I thought in panic. The thousands of tweets that followed confirmed the truth. It was October 5th, 2011, Steve Jobs was dead, and I was crying like a baby.
Steve had been sick for a while, and intellectually I knew his death was around the corner. I expected to be sad when he died, but I didn’t anticipate how emotional it would be for me. The world lost a cultural icon, a great business leader, and a man who delivered a string of “insanely great” products. I lost something more. I lost my hero—a lifelong mentor I had met in passing but didn’t know. He inspired me to embrace being different, to do what I love, and to never give up on my dreams.
As I laid roses at the makeshift memorial on the sidewalk in front of the Jobs’s house that evening, something he said hit me: “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.” His words gave me peace. He died much too young, but he died with faith in the next generation. He was passing the baton to a new batch of “crazy ones” like me who think different and want to change the world. It was a clear call-to-action, and one that I embraced personally.
Steve’s incredible success and public recognition, despite his character flaws and public failures, proved that being different was more than just okay, it was admirable. He demonstrated the value of a unique point of view, taking a stand, and demanding perfection. I am grateful that he taught the world to value individuality as it paves the way for me to be me.
Steve had a vision for the world that outlived him. He emphasized the importance of design, he was intuitive, he knew what consumers wanted, and he understood that simplicity is key. He saw a world where technology was human and would improve life instead of distracting from it. As someone who has shared this philosophy before I knew it was his philosophy, I feel a sense of responsibility to keep his vision alive. I had always hoped that, one day, Steve would be able to look at what I have created and be proud of me. Unfortunately, that day will never come, but I will always remember that, when he died, I was in the middle of doing what I loved.
In the end, I realized that his life had already affected me deeply. Although his death was sad, no one can take the lessons he taught away from me. It is now my turn to go off into the world, to live my own life and to set my own path—not to emulate Steve Jobs’s life, but instead to try to give the world as much as Steve did, so that when I die, I can leave knowing that the world is a better place.