Your Gift to Humanity

“I looked around and saw that everything around me was made by people; bridges, houses, cars, everything.  Then I realized that the people who created all these things were no smarter than I was and my life was changed!”

- Steve Jobs

Your Gift to Humanity

When I was growing up I always believed that the adults around me had all the answers.  It seemed to me that they had to have all the answers because they were adults and were in charge.  So, I could hardly wait until I was all grown up so I would have all the answers too.  Then it happened, I woke up one day and discovered I was an adult.  But I also discovered something else as well.

I found that the challenges of my life didn’t end.  I didn’t magically have all the answers to life and the other adults around me didn’t have all the answers either.  They were just doing what I had been doing all along; they were making it up as they went along.  It was all quite disconcerting and I’ve spent the rest of my life living in a confused state; that is until this week when I heard this quote from Steve Jobs.

He said, “I looked around and saw that everything around me was made by people; bridges, houses, cars, everything.  Then I realized that the people who created all these things were no smarter than I was and my life was changed!”

There was a time in my life when I thought Steve Jobs was successful because he was lucky and I longed to have such luck.  But over the years I watched him have success after success and I soon realized that he had discovered something that I hadn’t!  Now I know that he most likely discovered many things that I haven’t and I feel lucky to now know one way that he viewed the world differently than me.

So now I’m going to stop my search for the adult that has all the answers and focus on refining my ability to do things I thought could only be accomplished by people that were smarter and more talented that I.  I know that doing this will propel me forward because Steve continued by saying, “Once you discover this it’s all down hill.”

Still, walking down hill takes effort and direction.  After all, if one never makes an effort to take the first step then there will be no movement, no success.   For me the hardest part is the first step but, what I’ve found is that when I take that step I can keep the momentum going and keep things moving along as I learn by doing.  And, when I need a little encouragement now I have a model to look toward; I can look at all the amazing creations of which Steve Jobs was a part of and I know that he followed the same process to amazing success and a life full of gifts given to humanity.  If you’ll do the same then we will be giving humanity the greatest gift available; the gift giving your best!