Trust is a frightening thing to dive into. It is far easier to stay in fear. In a state of indecision, it is far easier to believe someone else’s version of our life than to believe in the small voice that tells us from within, “Its okay. Just jump into the abyss.”

I  don’t understand technology but am interested in the inner mechanics of the human spirit. What makes certain people choose risk over safety? Struggle over ease? What for instance turns a college  drop out into a Steve Jobs? The first time, I really had an insight  into his spirit was when his Stanford University commencement address (2005) went viral on YouTube.

Ironical. Considering he never graduated from college. But every word he spoke that day came from a place of true learning and wisdom. His speech was about his life but it resonated with everyone who heard him because we all face existential questions about who we are, what our purpose on this earth is.

The one thing I have learnt from every great life story I have encountered, is that those who leave behind something of value in the world, do not waste  their time fitting into stereotypes. They are not defined by their degrees, the books they have read or even the money they make. They set their own goals. Most importantly, they have a vision that is their own. And a certain amount of fearlessness that comes from self-belief. They don’t spend a lot of time proving  a point or even themselves to others but like Jobs said in his speech, at the end, it is all about connecting the dots. Seeing why we are brought to a certain impasse. Or a certain opportunity. Or a moment that shows that there is actually no difference between the two.

How well we read the sub-text of life is what makes our stories unique.  Jobs for instance could have stayed in college because he was supposed to. Because his adoptive parents had sunk their savings in his fees. He instead dropped out  just after six months but then as he says, “stayed around as a drop in for another 18 months.”  He did not know what he wanted to do really but he knew giving his mind up to regimented learning was not it.

Not many young people would take the risk of chucking conventional bells and whistles for the unknown. Not many would do it for the right reasons. But  Jobs,“decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.” Life changing words if they come from within.

He was frightened like all of us would be if the pathways carved for us, the design we are supposed to colour into suddenly vanished. But as he said, “Looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

When you stop doing what you don’t like, your energy is free to find things that will inspire you and connect you to yourself because as he shared, “The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.”

All transitions are painful and Jobs slummed it out by sleeping on the floor in his friends’ rooms and “walked seven  miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”
It was also one of the most invigorating times of his life because he felt for the first time that he was on a path of intention. For better or for worse.

Even though he had logged out of structured education, there was something bigger and better he was exploring, guided by his natural hunger for the quirky, the unusual.  He shared in retrospect, “Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.”

Jobs was drawn to a calligraphy class, to type faces, typography and more. He did not yet know how this would help him in the future. He just wanted to do it because,”it was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”

Yet, 10 years later, the stashed away memory was mined for ideas while he designed the Mac and incorporated typography, multiple typefaces and  “proportionally spaced fonts” in it.  Yes, the dots, the incidentals that connect in hindsight to pave our way into the future.

His words reinforced what I have always believed in. That nothing ever goes waste. The effort you put into life  and work may not make sense to you instantly but at some point, what you give, learn, invest in, finds its way back to you in some form. Life is not really confounding if you go by its laws. The first being that when you find things that interest you, inspire you, enrich you, the way ahead is bathed in clarity.

No one can say it better than Jobs, “You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Another thing that Jobs learnt at the cost of much strife and heartbreak is that though what you create can be taken away from you, what you create with, cannot. An idea, a fledgling enterprise or even an empire like the one Jobs built with all that he had, are easy to resent, criticise or steal but what goes into creating something, is inviolable.

Jobs initiated Apple in a garage at the age of 20. In 10 years, the garage dream became a $2 billion company with  thousands of employees. The Macintosh had become a global collectible and then at the age of 30, Jobs got fired from a company he had started. He recalls, “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.”

For a long time, Jobs could not remember who he was. He said, “I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.”

Then as the inessentials began to fall off, he travelled from the scattered fear and shame of being a failure in the public eye to his centre and found at his core, the fact that he was still the man who had created Apple. “Something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.” he recalled.

Life changing words again. As long as you remember who you are, you can start over. And the subtext again. Was getting fired from Apple an opportunity after all? He didn’t see it then but, “getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

So the college drop out who had created Apple, started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, “and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.”

All of the three things were to fundamentally enrich Jobs as a person and a man of new ideas. “Pixar created the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world,” Jobs said and with just a hint of irony added, “In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.”

So here is the next law of life according to the book of Jobs. Life comes full circle in ways we can’t imagine. The important thing is to not let a setback push you back from your path, your truth. To never forget yourself when you are being punished for the best in you and being pushed against a wall. To never stop believing that even in the worst of times, you can do your best. It all boils down to love. Everything. Who you are. What you create.

So many of us make do. Get by. Settle for less. Both creatively and personally and here is what Jobs believes, “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

If professional failure taught Jobs to focus on what was truly important, so did pancreatic cancer. Battling it with heroism could very well be his biggest achievement because the struggle could have sucked up hope and energy from a lesser man.  Jobs however did not stop learning. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

For someone who has manifested so much external success, the process to create it remains internal, untouched by opinion. For him, fame is superfluous. As is calumny. As is failure. He is truly and essentially, his own man and possibly a text book example of grace under fire. Of someone who has lived life with such fulfilling purpose that, “death is a useful but purely intellectual concept.”

Though even Steve Jobs concedes, that no one wants to die, “Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.”

But for him, death is an inescapable destination, “very likely the single best invention of Life.” A change agent that,”clears out the old to make way for the new.” And there is the inevitable deduction, “Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

For a man who has altered the way we use technology and expanded our imagination in a million ways, to believe that even he will become history tomorrow speaks of bone-deep, well-earned humility. He remains someone who was and is hungry for life, for everything that can teach him something new. He was always eager to break old patterns, build from scratch, a gadget, a company, a life unlike any other. Someone who was foolishly, gloriously adventurous and will now embrace the slowing down too as an adventure   into the unknown.

In the end, believes Jobs,  it is all about making the best use of our time here. Of knowing what truly matters to us because, “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.”

Because when someday when you have joined the last dot,  you will see someone you were reaching out to all along. Yourself.

Steve Jobs will no longer be helming Apple. He does not need to either because what he has created is greater than just a legacy of world altering inventions.  Through his work, his life, he has given us the courage to believe in our dreams. In the possibility that life is not incidental but intentional. And that if our thoughts are extraordinary, our lives will be too.

Reema Moudgil is the author of  Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )