15 minutes of inspiration. Worth your time.
Most interesting to me is Steve Jobs college experience. As I go about trying to decide what it is that I really want I feel stifled by the structure of university. Why is college not a series of "drop-in" sessions, instead of producing more and more "drop-outs". How would the university experience differ if the students were trusted to create their own education.
Much like Steve Jobs, the students of today are frustrated with the system as it is. The London riots are an example of this. People are no longer seeing the value in their degrees. What if their degrees could be tailor made? Surely the best education is one motivated by the individual, created to meet the needs of each of the students as unique entities.
This restrictive format, of "you do this and do it now" could be stifling thousands of students world wide. Knowledge is a gift, and a privilege but who decides which knowledge is more important?
What I am suggesting is simply that those who would benefit, and make the most of, the knowledge at their disposal are being kept in classes that will never be of use to them. And while calligraphy may have seemed to be a foolish decision of Steve Jobs, a decision that would never have been approved of by a board of "educators", it proved to be a starting point in his life.
What we see is that society is not giving space to appreciate beauty. People are not given time to discover interests that they never would of considered. We are constantly lead to believe that "being sensible" is what will ultimately benefit us. But, as Steve Jobs points out, in the face of death what will sense have gotten us?
If you were going to die tomorrow would you finish that essay you were doing? Maybe you would, simply because you were absorbed by it; because you were consumed by a hunger to discover and learn. As much as I wish this were the case for all of us I highly doubt it is.
I think fear of failure keeps us from even trying to achieve out dreams, or potential. Failure, as painful as it is, is ultimately a part of life, and if you look at anyone who has achieved apparent success you will see that they are the product of responding positively to failure. Personally I think failure is inevitable. Therefore it is not the number of times we "fail" but what we learn from it that will make the difference.
Every step of the way you should ask "Do you love what you do?". Are you willing to fight the fear of failure because you are passionate about your idea? Yes, we all have to eat, but make sure you are not only feeding yourself physically but that you are also nourishing your own sense of self. In the end YOU are the best thing you have to offer the world. Focus on making yourself a valuable gift. We can all be the apple of someone's eye.
