The Passing of Steve Jobs

At a time when our world needs better leaders—people who capture creativity, can inspire others and move forth with boldness—we lose Steve Jobs. He leaves an uncomfortable hole in our collective consciousness, as played out in various media. There is sadness, and a lot people admit not quite knowing exactly why. We didn’t know this man personally. We only know the products and brands he championed. We know his story, but most of us never directly experienced his leadership. It can only be then that we mourn the idea of Steve Jobs, what he represented in business and how we apply that to our lives. Indeed, the technology is useful—is cool, is fascinating, is unique—but it all stands most as one of the few areas in life in which we have had reliable guidance, in which we’ve built trust and allowed ourselves to follow another’s vision. And we fear what may happen now that Jobs’ vision is gone. Because right now, we’re lacking the inspiration he was known for. At a time when “leaders” in business and politics fail us, we’ve taken refuge in a brand, in a business, in an idea of how life could be. It is why his statement “stay hungry, stay foolish” has become a constant refrain. We so want to live up to this, especially now in this economically depressed state. But we’re not sure we can. So we spend time and energy relying on others, or being completely adrift. We relied on Jobs to stay hungry and foolish. Now we’re left searching for meaning in his death, thinking we now most need someone like him. We shouldn’t though. His passing should not cause us to look for the next Steve Jobs. If anything, his death signals that we should stop looking to others for answers and guidance and begin looking to ourselves—to be bold and express our own vision for the world, to take risks and rally others to great ideas, to fail and learn and move forth, knowing that all we have to lose is time and all we have to gain is ourselves.