“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs.
This is much easy said than executed. We are biologically wired as social creatures – monkeys see monkeys do!
I grew up the 70’s and the people I looked up and aspired to become were unsung heroes that from time to tome caught the media attention. Their stories were typically short lived, but had added to my inspiration for becoming someone useful.
One of the stories was told from the country Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976, the first outbreak of the deadly disease – Ebola.
There was a short video of a lone Doctor, fully masked from head to toes, who remained at the make shift hospital with the dying patients to their last moment – after all the other health workers had fled the hopeless scene.
Eventually, he died from the contraction of the Ebola virus.
It was the inspiration from this type of story that gave me the dream of growing up to be useful, to be a hero – college was the path toward the dream.
Starting out life in the low economic spectrum of the society, college was a tall barrier for a kid from the family where the main bread winner was a dishwasher in a restaurant.
It was at this humble beginning that I learned I could not have –
- A cool sport car to woo the girls
- Designer clothes and shoes to fit in with kids in school
- A Disney family vacation
- An opportunity to participate in school related sports
This memory lane walk is neither a self pity nor the resentment toward my father. He did his best within his capability along with the limited opportunities.
I felt his struggle and clearly understood that there were many things that were beyond our economic circumstance. I clearly understood at that young age that I cannot have everything – however, I was sure there is something in the world that I want and I can have it!
Despite the burden of poverty, I was determined to have a college education – it was something I wanted to have for the rest of my life.
In time, I was able to earn a college education and became the first one in my family to graduate from the College of Engineering.
What I learned from my own experience is that there are overwhelming desires in life – becoming a rock star, a Hollywood actor, a sport champion, marry to a perfect mate, having an awesome career, having a cool sport car and millions more.
All of these desires are shiny objects and each one will command a part of your mindset – in totality, they are take full control and preventing you from making plan for the things that matter most to you.
Most of us are reasonable in the detail understanding of ourselves with regard to our physicality and capability.
For an example of physicality, let’s say you know you are 5 feet and eight inches in height. Your dream of becoming a super sport star in the NBA is quite bleak.
This is not to say there are no NBA players at this height, but it is far few in between due to high competition from much taller competitors.
In this case, it is much more logical to focus on the career that is more in line your physical statue.
The example of capability would be my own story told above. Growing up, I did not have the financial capability to have the cool sport car or designer clothes.
I could have worked hard to earn a paycheck as I get older to acquire the wants, but I decided that a college education was more much more important to me, thus, all the focus and efforts were directed to the higher education.
I can have the college education as long as I come to term – I cannot have everything!
Most geniuses who grew up and changed the world around them more often found the creativity hidden within themselves, and made it a lifelong effort to bring it into reality. They were careless of everything in the world – and directed their total attention only toward their dreams.
The rest of the population will have took at the world that has already been created and duplicated a small part of it and called it their lives – hence, the meaning in the quote …living someone else’s life… by Steve Jobs.
One of the many regrets at the end of life for many is that we have lived our entire life serially chased someone else’s life one after another.
In the end when the time is up, we finally took a moment to reflect and understood the thing that matter to us most – but, the precious time to make it happens is no longer available.
There is nothing wrong in looking out into the world for examples that inspire our inner the desire to bring the best ourselves into the play.
It is absolute essential to carefully evaluate these examples and select the one that leads toward financial security, meaningful relationship, enhance vitality and useful to humanity.
Once you have found the example that match up with your inner desire, let’s go of everything else and devote the totality of time and effort toward the thing that you want – and you will have it in time.
It is true that your time on this earth is very limited. Focus on just few things and put all your being into it will make the journey worth of your precious existence.
Let’s play the game of life!
