Here's the key passage from his resignation letter. It runs just 17 words:
"I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple."
It's simple, matter-of-fact, and almost boring, despite how momentous the letter itself was. Read it in the context of what Jobs had said at Stanford, however, and it takes on incredible power.
These lines from that 2005 speech have stuck with me ever since I first heard them:
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.
By early 2011, Jobs understood that he was becoming "the old," and that it was happening ahead of his time. Turning 56, he was battling pancreatic cancer for the second time. He'd had to take medical leave for most of the year.
He knew what was coming, and he died just 42 days after stepping down at Apple.
No comments:
Post a Comment