Heroes
Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 1:51AM It seems I've reached the age where my heroes are fading away.
Today, Steve Jobs announced his resignation as CEO of Apple. It's not a surprise, he hasn't really been running things day to day for almost a year now. Tim Cook is completely qualified to run the company and continue its incredible, unprecedented streak of success. And Steve will still be there, as the Chairman of the Board, and will still be involved, most likely at a similar level as he has been over the last 8 months. (For example, I would not be all that shocked to see him walk out on the stage to announce the iPhone 5.)
But that's not what this post is about. This post, rather selfishly, is about me. If you're looking for posts about Steve Jobs and his legacy and so on, oh there are so many good ones that have been written in the last 7 hours. This is my reaction.
My dad is my first (and probably greatest) hero. He's been gone for ten years now, lost to brain cancer in late 2001. With the baby on the way, he's been in my mind a lot lately. I had a long conversation with my mom about him recently, about what makes a good father of course, but also about how he would have felt about my life and my business. He's the one who gave me my entrepreneurial streak, which he had himself but never managed to make it work. So far, I have, and the thought that I'm carrying on that torch gets me through the tougher times.
My uncle is my next hero. He's the one who got me started in programming, gave me my first shot, working for him when I was just a young teenager, fixing bugs in Access 2.0 databases for his consulting company. He's currently very sick, fighting a rare and dangerous disease called Wegener's granulomatosis. I think about him every day.
My third hero is Jimmy Buffett. Go ahead and laugh, I've gotten that reaction before. His music means a lot to me though. It drove me out of Connecticut and into Florida. It makes me happy, inspires me to create, follow my heart, and design and live the life I want to live. He is, fortunately for me, still going strong and making new music, and one of my biggest hopes in life is that one day I'll get to meet him and thank him for the inspiration, even though I'm sure he gets it all the time.
And finally, of course, there's Steve Jobs. I've built my business, my career and a vast portion of my life around the products he's created. He's called a visionary quite often, and he is, but he's also the guy who drives the vision and makes it actually happen. What can you say about a person like that?
You'll see a lot of inspirational quotes from Steve. Here's my favorite from his 2005 Stanford speech: "[H]ave the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."
One of my heroes stepped back today. But there he is, telling me and anyone else who cares to listen: have courage, follow your heart, follow your intuition. He took a lot of risks in his career; smart, well thought out risks, but risks just the same, and he had the courage to do it because he knew, in his heart and in his gut, that it was the right thing to do. It's time for me to follow that advice. It's time for me to build on what I've already done, and have the courage to follow my heart and become what I truly want to become.
My heroes are fading away. That just means it's time for me to step up, take their place, and try to be a hero for someone else.
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Really your dad is hero....
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