It has been wonderful to watch the outpouring of love and gratitude for the life of Steve Jobs. This genius of innovation,technology and so much more seems to have lived a life committed to creativity and a dedication to dreaming his way into the future while bringing, and sometimes dragging a large part of the world with him. Listening to the words of those who knew him and those who have been influenced by him has provided a glimpse into a way of remembering someone who brought so much changed to the ways we communicate over the last decade. His death at such a young age is sad and makes me wonder, if he had been able to live longer, what new things he would have created.

All his innovations are amazing, I am in fact, using one of them at this very moment. But when I think of Steve Jobs I am most inspired and challenged, not by what he created, but by words he spoke. I am speaking of his commencement address at Stanford in 2005. I had read it several times over the years but as it has been replayed and quoted all over the Internet this week, I have once again been confronted with its deep truth.

He wrote: “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.”

Speaking to a group of, no doubt, high powered college seniors with their lives unfolding in front of them, he spoke of death with a courage I have rarely heard preached from pulpits. Some there may have thought it a downer to talk of such things on this special day. But I hope they now recognize the gift he was offering. He spoke of looking at himself every day in the mirror and asking if he was doing what brings him happiness, what gives him life, what he was meant to do. He spoke of how death is the greatest gift life brings because it calls everything into question.

There is such truth in his words. I have found myself over the last few days, while at least metaphorically looking into a mirror, asking those questions. I have found myself enlivened by the prospect of abandoning what, in the face of death, would seem senseless and silly. Instead I have thought about what brings me life, what makes my heart sing, what I might regret never having done. With this lens so much of the dogma of what we ‘should’ do, how we ‘should’ be, falls away.

Of course, at our core, we all know the truth of this. But in the day to day going about our lives, it is so easy to forget. It is so easy to do this and that only to realize you have used up the majority of your day accomplishing tasks that can equate to gerbil wheel activity. It is something to consider about, isn’t it?

This week I have been thankful to the brilliant living of Steve Jobs who once again called the question. With his living and with his dying. May each of us have the courage and the will to approach each day with the sure knowledge that it is pure gift. A gift not to be squandered.

Blessed be…..