Wow, I thought Steve Jobs was an outstanding individual using so many of his talents and gifts but his compasion the greatest. Would you please direct me to the full article filed under Caregiver emotional support
Steve Jobs was a remarkable person. His 2005 commencement speech was remarkable.
But pulling a few sentences out of context and trying to make them fit a caregiving situation seems almost disrespectful. It seems like a marketing ploy.
Maggiesue, hearing or reading the entire short speech might make a lot more sense to you than this article does. Jobs explains why he dropped out of college and how good that move turned out to be. (Maybe if you dropped out of caregiving that would be good too. It is worth a thought.) He talks about imagining that this were the last day of your life. Would you still want to do what you are doing? If the answer is no for many days in a row, maybe that is a sign that you should change what you are doing. Some things in our lives that seem really awful at the time (in his case, being fired from the company he started) turn out to have been for the best, but you can't tell that until you are well past the event.
It is a brilliant commencement speech. It is not intended as advice on whether and how to raise children or caregive aging parents. It isn't about marriage or politics or religion. It is profound within it own limited sphere. It isn't necessary (or appropriate, in my opinion) to pull it out of context and make something different of it than it was.
Thanks, Anne-Marie. I sat in my car listening to the Jobs speech yesterday, thinking of the unique person I was created to be and how I need to get back to being that person. Yes, it may be hard to do right now with helping care for my mom, but your pointing the connect the dots part of the speech is a hopeful statement for me. That's for me. I hear MaggieSue's pain and anger, and I in no way mean to denigrate it or ignore it or seem Pollyannish. I just wanted to affirm that for me in my situation, it's a hopeful quote that made me tear up.
What is the author talking about? I don't get it. I don't really think that in the future I'll find some "meaning" to the years spent in caregiving a person who has always been against me and whose values I detest. What is the author trying to do? Make some sense out of this irrational and unlucky situation?
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Courtesy of Steve Jobs, A Caregiver’s Commencement Speech
But pulling a few sentences out of context and trying to make them fit a caregiving situation seems almost disrespectful. It seems like a marketing ploy.
Maggiesue, hearing or reading the entire short speech might make a lot more sense to you than this article does. Jobs explains why he dropped out of college and how good that move turned out to be. (Maybe if you dropped out of caregiving that would be good too. It is worth a thought.) He talks about imagining that this were the last day of your life. Would you still want to do what you are doing? If the answer is no for many days in a row, maybe that is a sign that you should change what you are doing. Some things in our lives that seem really awful at the time (in his case, being fired from the company he started) turn out to have been for the best, but you can't tell that until you are well past the event.
It is a brilliant commencement speech. It is not intended as advice on whether and how to raise children or caregive aging parents. It isn't about marriage or politics or religion. It is profound within it own limited sphere. It isn't necessary (or appropriate, in my opinion) to pull it out of context and make something different of it than it was.