Much love. Namaste.

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When something as sweeping as this happens, there just isn’t much you can say that hasn’t already been said.

Though some people may remember Steve as the archetypical bullshitter, capable of making something as rudimentary as magnets seem revolutionary, the ironic reality is that he saw the status quo of technology and relentlessly worked to eliminate the bullshit from it.

I can’t help but feel a bit selfish. I didn’t lose a close family member or friend. My relationship with Steve is no doubt quite unilateral and he never even knew of my existence unless perhaps he read an email of mine at some point. Knowing that I really only know Steve in that I have benefited immensely from his contributions to the world does make me feel a bit like I am mourning his loss for the wrong reasons.

But I’m not mourning Steve’s loss because I enjoy some electronic gadgets. I’m mourning his loss because of his ideas and philosophy and his ability to execute these on the scale that he was able to do. His thinking has in part spawned a vibrant Silicon Valley that isn’t so focused on the typical bullshit that you hear about from businesses.  And to top off this legacy, there are tens of thousands of developers making a living using the platforms Steve helped create.

So Steve, you might need yet another blog post honoring your life like you need a Zune, and a passage from your Stanford commencement address is really going to cliché it up, but here goes:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. 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.

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.

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