The wonderful speech delivered by Steve Jobs

Written on January 17th, 2007
I just came home after a meeting with a very special friend of mine. I’m enjoying music on the new headset I got today and thinking randomly.

I love talking to this girl. She’s one of those people that you know you don’t have to “draw” what you say because she gets it, and if she doesn’t, she ask you to repeat. I think more should have that attitude. Anyway, I was telling her about that wonderful, wonderful speech that Steve Jobs delivered at one graduation at Stanford University. I was telling her that it would be useful for her to write down anything that she felt like; or anything that she felt after listening to the speech. I then realized that I, myself, never did that and that it might be useful also for me. As I listened to that speech for over 30 times, I have it all in my head.

I’m thinking about the part when he says that leaving college was one of the best decisions he took. That the dots will connect as long as you trust they will. It’s been three months now since I left @Bucharest, and I must say that my last experience in AIESEC (faci at ICPS), which was a great one for me, wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t. I know I had some hard times in these three months, but the horizon that I’ve just started to see makes it up to all the grieving moments and all the dirty language I used with others just because I was angry at life.

I think that all your decisions have the potential of being great decisions, as long as you don’t lose faith, as long as you are proactive and as long as you don’t let yourself contest your own decisions. “It was an awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it” are some of the words that loiter in my mind now. “Sometimes life’s going to hit you in your head with a brick; don’t lose faith”!!! I know that I was in a deep state of depression for about two weeks: I had no purpose for my life; I couldn’t eat, sleep, go to school, or other shit like that. But I never abandoned myself there. I was always thinking: “I have to find the things that I want to do, the things that I LOVE”. It took me about two weeks before my first wrong idea came. I was so into it (because of the fact that it took me two weeks to dig it up) that I didn’t see that it was bullshit at first. Afterwards I did see that.

And another appeared. I now have to focus on my exam session in school, my responsibilities with NEXT (in @), my potential role of coach for @Pl and my business. If these things go well (and I will “strive for excellence”), I think that I will say, without a doubt, that leaving @Bu at that moment was one of the best decisions I took as these things (except my exams) wouldn’t have been my focuses if I hadn’t left.

Food for thought: When do meaningful words become “buzz words” and why?