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A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
- mstroeck 15y ago1) This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. 2) I finally realize what has always fascinated me about him. He was ALWAYS working, with every single breath he took. He seems to have found a way of taking the hazy concept of "work" as it is commonly understood, and elevating it to a more in-focus ideal form through which to understand and shape his life.
- technoslut 15y agoThe 2nd point you made reminds of Beethoven and how he overcame deafness to write some of his most brilliant pieces. He was incredibly passionate about his work and it was reflected in his music. It's amazing to see read this story and to realize that maybe Jobs' most important inventions, the iPhone and iPad, came at a point of extreme illness where most others would've quit. Passion drove everything he did and defined who he was. Sidenote: I hate broccoli too.
- kachnuv_ocasek 15y agoSmetana was deaf, too, and one of the best composers.
- javek 15y agoAs a side note, in a way it's misleading to speak of Beethoven "overcoming" deafness. All of the master composers were so well-trained at their craft that they could hear the music in their head without "trying it out" on a piano or other instrument. By the time Beethoven was deaf being able to hear was superfluous as far as composing was concerned...
- mechanical_fish 15y agoWe know that Beethoven himself was tremendously depressed by the onset of deafness and thought of it as a terrible misfortune to be heroically struggled with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligenstadt_Testament http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligenstadt_Testament But we also know that he gave himself excellent pep talks and then kept going for another thirty years, writing great stuff long after his deafness was far worse than it was in 1802. So, yes, it seems that Beethoven eventually came to agree with you! And, come to think of it, as I remember Beethoven's biggest complaints about deafness centered on loneliness, and on his fear that nobody would want to hire a deaf composer. I don't actually recall him complaining that his work might suffer. So that's another point in favor of your argument.
- mechanical_fish 15y agoOops, too late to edit, but I forgot that when Beethoven wrote his Testament his fame up to that point had been largely as a pianist, with a healthy side order of composition. And I believe he might have expressed some worry that his piano playing might suffer... which in fact it did; history contains quite a few tragi-comic written descriptions of Beethoven's latter-day attempts to play and conduct. But his composition just got better, so in fact his declining fame as a performer was balanced by his increasing fame as a composer.
- angelbob 15y agoIf I couldn't run a compiler on a computer for some reason and had to do it all in my head, I could still write fabulous programs. And yet, it would certainly put a dent in some of my abilities.
- siglesias 15y agoActually in a lot of his orchestral work, for example the 8th symphony, his arrangement was off. Stuff like trumpets being drowned out by other horns, etc. It's the kind of thing that would be hard to imagine without hearing it.
- moomin 15y agoFrom Neal Stephenson: YT: That's the problem with you hackers, you're always working. HT: No, that's what hackers _are_. Apologies if I've misquoted.
- mparr4 15y agowhich book? I've never read any of his before
- nagrom 15y agoYT was in Snow Crash and I think that HT should be HP: Hiro Protagonist. Although I don't remember that quote in the book.
- gwern 15y agoPerhaps because it is a misquote; my .txt reads: "What the fuck do you want?" "Y.T., I'm sorry about this. But something's going on. Something big time. I'm keeping one eye on a big biker named Raven." "The problem with you hackers is you never stop working." "That's what a hacker is," Hiro says. "I'll keep an eye on this Raven guy, too," she says, "sometime when I am working." Then she hangs up.
- dicroce 15y agoYT was also briefly in "The Diamond Age". :)
- tristan_louis 15y agoTrue. That one always blew my mind as it really created a link between the two books. I was half expecting some of the characters to reappear when Cryptonomicon came out (didn't happen but Cryptonomicon has some linkage to the Baroque chronicles)
- phuff 15y agoWhere is YT in the Diamond Age?
- drawkbox 15y agoThis shows a good side of him, love. He put that in the products. Great writing, his final words were striking.
- jacquesm 15y agoNot a SJ fan, but man that hurts.
- antr 15y agoi've cried reading this article. god bless sj
- notagain 15y agoHe did not believe in god. Besides, I hope you cry for a lot of other things as well, otherwise, I would find this disturbing. Edit : downvoted as expected... yes I find it disturbing that people are still so sensitive on sj death as compared to other tragic events.
- technoslut 15y ago>I hope you cry for a lot of other things as well, otherwise, I would find this disturbing. Should we cry at every tragedy? If so, we would always be crying. A death of a great man has moved him(her). Leave it at that. EDIT: I hope more people downvote me into oblivion because I really don't give a damn. I was the kid who had a really bad life growing up, had friends who chose a very wrong path and read three newspapers everyday attempting to either find answer to the pain in the world or to look at a different journalist's critique of the situation in the hope of finding something positive. I concentrated on every single tragedy I was aware of because I wanted to save them but I could not. Heck, even to this day, I still care about every single life on this earth. At some point you learn not to cry to about what happens. It begins to wear you down. I no longer read the news because I no longer want the negativity. As always, if I can change things along the way I do so. But I'm willing to bet many of you do not. To cry about everything is a child's notion. Adults are not afforded that option.
- notagain2 15y agothat was an incredibly moving eulogy. I just so happen to be about a quarter the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about "young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life. Mona really hit on something when she said we die in the middle of many stories. Im interested to read some of her work now.
- seanmccann 15y agoOH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW. One can only wonder what he was referring to. Such a well written piece.
- richbradshaw 15y agoThe quote is: "Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW." I assumed the "Oh wow"s referred to each of those people.
- powertower 15y agoIn the Buddhist tradition, being aware and clear minded (no grasping to life, no desires, no regrets, no fear) during the end of the self, while being in a meditative state, is the greatest feeling you can experience. It seemed to me like Steve got to that place he was referring to when he last talked to his wife. > He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place. It's not exactly a "place", but you can only do so much with words. Imagine fully realizing that you're one with the Universe ... and then your mind shuts off, your body dies, there is no more action, what you where is no more, there is only silence. The end. But that's a good thing!
- Alex3917 15y agoMore specifically, there is an enormous importance placed on dying well. Read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying for a really good explanation.
- robertk 15y agoNo, it is not. Yet not knowing what the alternative is like gives us that delusion. http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
- Fluxx 15y agoFor me I interpreted it as him being somewhat conscious as the feeling of your body dying comes over you and you pass. I have no idea what that would actually feel like, or if that's what happened/is possible, but the thought of being awake and experiencing that feeling gives me chills.
- paraschopra 15y agoAbsolutely beautiful. I couldn't get my eyes of the writing. What I REALLY like about the piece was portrayal of Jobs as a loving and affectionate human being which is what ultimately matters. Feels good to know that Jobs parted with such an expression of amazement... Thanks for writing this, Mona.
- alexholehouse 15y agoI think that fact he was sketching x-ray machines, iPad holders etc. even in hospital is just fantastic. The man did what he loved.
- cheez 15y agoI'm glad the stream of "Steve Jobs was an asshole/genius" articles is done. This one shows his real human side.
- ethank 15y agoI don't think any of the "asshole" or "genius" articles were diminishing of his humanity. We as humans are made up of all aspects of our beings. The good an the bad, public and private, personal and not. What distinguishes Jobs is he existed in layers from exceedingly public, second hand, apocryphal to private. What I love about this is it feels like a balancing of that gradient.
- pknerd 15y agoNow I realize why most of his products are so poetic.
- rmason 15y agoIt was a moving and powerful eulogy. Probably the most beautiful thing I've seen written about Jobs since his passing. One important takeaway for me was the quote: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.” I've experienced this firsthand. I've been privileged to work with some great web designers. I've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rejecting a design and it has always served me very well. Sometimes your first reaction is going to be negative but in a day or so it reverses. I am not certain why this is true but for me it's been a winning strategy.
- bluekeybox 15y agoI've forced myself to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rejecting a design and it has always served me very well. I've just completed designing a logo for the project I'm working on. Lacking experts around me whose judgement I could rely on, I came up with the following creative process: 1. Come up with an idea and prepare a demo/prototype. 2. Show the demo to a few people around you, preferably those who have some semblance of taste, but they don't have to be experts. If you own a smart parrot, the parrot will do. Since you want to avoid disclosing your idea to competitors, those people should preferably be either close friends or ones who work in a completely different field. 3. Note their reaction. If it is silent or if they say something generic and don't go with an enthusiastic "WOW" in the first three seconds, they are unimpressed. Expect them to be unimpressed, but don't worry about it right away, because even if you showed them, for example, a Paul Rand-designed logo pretending to be your work, they would not recognize it either and would remain unimpressed (they are not experts, remember?). 4. Wait 24 hours. Then ask yourself if you are bothered at all by the disinterest of the people you showed your work to. If you are indeed bothered, it means that your intuitive/emotional brain is telling you that your work is not good enough and that you should go back to step 1. If you are not bothered at all, it means your work is as good as your intuitive judgement is, and you can move on. The goal is to convince yourself that your work is good enough. Once you achieved that, the opinion of others doesn't really matter. I find this algorithm to be pretty efficient; it lets me hone in on a correct design within a week's time. Your mileage may vary.
- 15y ago
- stevenj 15y agoWow.
- 24pfilms 15y agoHaving lost both of my older brilliant brothers to HIV AIDS this passing of SJ conjures up many many emotions. Life is fleeting, live it fully in all you do. For the reaper does come, always unexpectedly.
- js2 15y agoExtraordinary.
- HankMcCoy 15y agoVery well written, but I noticed that his parents are never mentioned, what happened to them? (Paul Jobs, Clara Jobs)
- kloc 15y agoAfter reading several articles about Steve before and after his death and after reading his official biography,I always felt that nothing could yet capture the essence of how Steve actually was. This eulogy comes really really close. Beautiful piece of writing. Thank you.
- PGenes 15y agoEnough with the Steve Jobs worshipping. It's just stupid and demeaning.
- simplegeek 15y agoBeautiful writing. Thank you. I always thought why people cried reading such stuff.....until now.
- edo 15y agoBeautiful.
- _corbett 15y agovery beautiful, felt voyeuristic reading it though–private Jobs public eulogy.
- mrb 15y agoBeautiful eulogy. However either it, or Jobs' biography, is erroneous about who called Mona to let her know she had a brother. This eulogy claims a lawyer called Mona. But the biography, in chapter 20, claims it is Mona's mother, Joanne, who called: """ [Joanne] had never told Mona that she had a brother, and that day she broke the news, or at least part of it, by telephone. "You have a brother, and he's wonderful, and he 's famoous, and I'm going to bring him to New York so you can meet him," she said. """
- HSO 15y agoInsanely moving. The ending takes my breath away.
- manish_gill 15y agoThat was extremely moving. Beautifully written. "Oh Wow". One can only wonder...
- latchkey 15y agoWhat is more amazing is how quickly someone registered his last words.com
- jfb 15y agoI always thought of him as a sociopath. It's nice to read an insider's take that isn't suffused with narcissism and loathing, although I always did figure him for a jerk for parking that Merc in the handicapped space every. goddamned. day.
- jimbokun 15y agoI really found this eulogy quite moving and beautiful and gave me an appreciation for a Steve Jobs that has not been captured by any of the other things I've read about him since his passing. But the part about going through 67 nurses did give me a little chill. My heart goes out to those poor 64 people who tried and failed to care for him up to the level of his demanding standards.
- tristan_louis 15y agoOn the other hand, maybe one of them was shaken into improving, leading the next person to get a better level of care. One never knows. It is true that to demand better than good is a tough challenge but I suspect it is why people look to Jobs with some confusion: he expected the best from himself and from those around him. In a regular corporate setting, that may seem dictatorial; in a hospital or care room, that seems psychotic; but in either case, it is about trying to inspire people into giving their best and breaking through to new levels.
- philwelch 15y agoHaving visited loved ones in the hospital, it's not hard to imagine Steve declaring a lot of nurses "bozos" and demanding better. There is a lot of variability in nurse quality.
- ethank 15y agoDon't throw the word "sociopath" around so casually.
- Bratwurst 15y agoAt the same time. From the Issacson bio, I think there was no reserved CEO parking spot either. Buddhist Billionaires can be confusing.
- TWSS 15y agoIt's obvious that his sister shares his genius. I'm so grateful she shared this intensely private experience with the world. I have a half brother, ten years older. We didn't grow up together. Mona's story gives me hope that there are relationships we seek out later in life that are just as fulfilling, if not more so, than those we are given as children and take for granted.
- RyLuke 15y agoThis is a really beautiful piece of writing; it’s quite a gift that Mona Simpson would deign to share such a personal eulogy with the world. The Jobs family certainly didn’t owe any of us insight into his final time on earth. From all popular accounts, Jobs was an intensely private man about his personal and family life; something refreshing in an age when celebrity is conflated with talent and young people like Mark Zuckerberg opine that privacy is an anachronistic social norm. Love him or loath him -- and there is certainly enough evidence to support both reactions -- the conversation is almost always about the work and Steve Jobs as a professional. As one who still values the notion of personal privacy, I’ve always been grateful for that. Yet what makes this piece so potent is that Simpson reflects primarily on Steve Jobs as a person: a brother, father, and husband, not a boss, or showman. In so many ways, her eulogy could be applied to any person who has lived fully and loved their family deeply. There’s quite a sublimity in that contrast, something I suspect was not lost on Jobs and his family in the creation and dissemination of this eulogy and the Isaacson biography to the public. And perhaps on that point, it’s wonderfully surprising that Steve Jobs, widely considered an arbiter of taste and design curation, wasn’t yet familiar with Mark Rothko -- one of the premier painters of the 20th century -- until the final year of his life.
- S_A_P 15y agothat was an incredibly moving eulogy. I just so happen to be about a quarter the way through his biography, and its an interesting contrast to read about "young" ambitious steve vs steve in the sunset of his life. Mona really hit on something when she said we die in the middle of many stories. Im interested to read some of her work now.
- PGenes2 15y ago
- osteve 15y agoGoodness. I have survived all of the media without crying. Until this.
- MikeCapone 15y agoI cried like a baby while reading the last part of this eulogy. It brought me straight back to a hot hotel room where I saw my uncle - a second father to me - die from brain cancer. Makes me want to donate more to medical research (my favorite foundation is SENS.org, but there are many good ones). I think it's okay to be sad, but we also have to do something to make things better.
- stashdot 15y agoSo sad, buddy, but why was it a hotel room?
- MikeCapone 15y agoThat was a weird typo; I meant to write hospital room.
- Gaussian 15y agoExtraordinary writing. Everybody should have such a talented sister at the lectern on the day they're remembered.
- UjjwolL 15y agoShe was a passionate writer as Steve Jobs was for Technology. He even read her books.
- mikeleeorg 15y agoWe all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories. This line is so beautifully & hauntingly crafted. I wish I had thought to add her books to my reading list sooner.
- jjtheblunt 15y agoThe idea is great, but it's not "in media res" which means "INTO the midst of things" not "IN the midst of things". She might not have had Latin, so may not have known it was a literary technique in Latin, and perhaps Greek, a way to start a story with no intro, just by jumping right into the action.
- F_J_H 15y ago"INTO the midst of things" things could be very fitting as well, depending on your thoughts on the after life. Some choose to believe we join a party already in full swing...
- maigret 15y agoAnd I hope she still is a passionate writer ;)
- stevjc 15y agoGoodness. I have survived all of the media without crying. Until this.
- sandee 15y ago"He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. " Instead of charity, if the billionaires or super smarts like gates, larry/sergey, bezos,pg etc can live in ordinary people situations for 2-3 days a year, their imagination will fuel creations that benefit all. Is this not tried already ?
- philwelch 15y agoA lot of billionaires live in "ordinary people situations" more than you think. There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of those. And mere millionaires largely can't afford anything more than living like ordinary people. And there are a lot of ways that rich people can't actually get anything more special than anyone else, at least not easily. It's not feasible to build hospitals just for rich people, so a billionaire goes to the same hospitals as ordinary people. Consumer electronics don't generally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so a billionaire has the same kind of stuff ordinary people have.
- sandee 15y ago"situation" is about putting a different level of constraints on them and asking them to optimize within those. And not necessarily involving only buying stuff.
- Stratoscope 15y ago> There's always the Bill Gates or Larry Ellisons of the world building supermansions and owning all the yachts, but Steve wasn't exactly one of those. Indeed. I've run into Steve three times. Twice we were both shopping for produce at a natural food store (Country Sun in Palo Alto, and the old Richard's Natural Foods in Los Gatos). The last time was just a year ago. I sat down for dinner on the patio at La Strada, a nice Italian restaurant on University Avenue a few doors down from the Palo Alto Apple store, and there were Steve and his daughter at the next table. After dinner they took a stroll down University Avenue, just the two of them. I imagine they were probably going to get some frozen yogurt. I thought to myself, "Doesn't he have some security? A bodyguard? Something?" There are a lot of Silicon Valley executives who I'd recognize if I saw them. But Steve is the only one who I've ever run into doing ordinary things like produce shopping.
- notagain2 15y agoVery moving, and a different side to the personality that we've been hearing about.
- blantonl 15y agoHe designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. It is scary to think what Steve could have accomplished if he lived into his 70's.
- chugger 15y agoit's even scarier to think what the millions of artists, entrepreneurs, etc. who Steve inspired will accomplish in the future. Right now there's someone working on the next billion dollar start-up in his garage that's going to blow us all away because he was inspired by Steve. That's Steve's greatest legacy.
- acangiano 15y agoI expressed the same thought on my blog a few weeks ago: "He managed to inspire a whole industry, while doing what he truly loved. Millions of entrepreneurs world wide have been inspired to do the same as a result of his work. This may be his greatest legacy and something that will live on in all of us long after his passing."
- plnewman 15y agoI once read that Howard Hughes did something similar while he was recuperating from an accident.
- philwelch 15y agoRobert Heinlein, while hospitalized, once designed, in his head, a far more comfortable hospital bed. He later wrote about it in one of his books in such great detail that when the waterbed was eventually invented, it couldn't be patented because Heinlein's written descriptions gave so much detail to qualify as prior art.
- jodrellblank 15y agoI do wonder; he was a multi billionaire personally, and Apple was a multi tens-of-billionaire as a company. So what was the most causative bottleneck stopping more new products and creations? Clearly not financial limits. Apparently not a lack of ideas. Was it logistical organisation of stuff? Managerial organisation of people? Which was the most constrained resource? Had anyone studied it or tried to optimise it?
- notagain2 15y agoBeautifully written. I feel I have a lot to learn from Steve. He was so greatly misunderstood by so many. Steve was an incredibly smart man who knew exactly what he wanted, and wouldn't stop at anything to get that. I'm glad he spent his life doing what he loved. He will always be an inspiration to me.
- alexwolfe 15y agoI think this Eulogy helped give many people closure on Steve's passing. Such a well written piece. I'm really appreciate that she publicly shared this very personal moments with the rest of us, touching.
- dilap 15y agoFucking fantastic.
- mikeleeorg 15y agoIntubated, when he couldn't talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. I hope someone takes his sketches and runs with that vision. He's been able to re-imagine other devices wonderfully. To think of what he could have done with hospital equipment is amazing (that at his core, at his most vulnerable, he resorts to creativity) and sad (that he won't be around to execute upon these visions).
- gsk 15y agoAlongside Einstein's final hours (see Einstein: A Life by Denis Brian), I found Steve Jobs final hours to be profoundly human and moving. Steve Jobs admired Einstein and in some ways he seems to have faced death as Einstein had: with calm dignity, love, and atop a mountain of great work on this pale blue dot of ours.
- ghiculescu 15y agoAd at the bottom of the article: http://i.imgur.com/sC0g8.png http://i.imgur.com/sC0g8.png I know it's automated, but still :/
- dhirajbajaj 15y ago"he didn't died he achieved it" simply beautiful...
- jamesrom 15y agoWow. Simply beautiful.
- a1235813 15y agoso beautiful.
- mikecaron 15y agoWhat I really find remarkable about Mr. Jobs is that he lived without extravagance. I am impressed by his desire to teach his kids to be "normal" and I am astonished that he was there for his family first and foremost, valuing love and fun in front of them. His kids (and wife) know a man who did not value success and money, but love and family. It is an impressive man who can ignore the pull of riches and embrace the pull of love.
- mixmastamyk 15y agoI'm glad to hear he made some time for family.
- erickhill 15y agoSteve Jobs had a daughter named Eve (as in she who bit the fabled apple)? I did not know that. How perfect.
- PGenes 15y agoNice eulogy for an arsehole