Earlier this month, we lost a visionary. We lost someone who touched the lives of millions of people around the world. We lost someone who had passion and fearlessness, and a drive for perfection.
Steve Jobs changed my life in several substantial ways. From the MacBooks that allowed my family to stay close via video chat, to the iPod apps that enhanced my medical education, to the iPad that inspired my 4-year-old niece to learn her alphabet, his legacy has enriched countless lives. His vision and imagination made technology friendly and intuitive. He turned complexity into simplicity, giving us new ways to access limitless information, entertainment, and connectivity. He turned technology into possibility for all, tearing down the notion that technology was reserved for computer literate.
Today in the hospital, I see patients filling out forms and reading about their conditions on iPads. I see physicians and nurses looking up information on iPhones. Having this technology at our fingertips isn’t merely a convenience. I see how it is actually changing the course of patient care.
I still remember a speech Mr. Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. It was powerful. I have thought about these words in particular since I graduated and, perhaps most befitting, the year I started medical school.
“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.”
Follow your heart. Follow your intuition. Heeding those words were what led me to medical school in the first place. Hearing them again encourages me to focus and pay attention to my inner voice – not always easy to do when balancing the demands of resident life with the rest of life. Still, life’s short. So everyday I embrace it. Everyday I listen hard for that inner voice. And everyday I ask how I can become a better man.