Literature
Essays
How to Live Before You Die
Before Reading
Answer these questions
a. What do you know about Steve Job's family and
economic background?
Ans:- Steve Jobs was born out of an unwed
mother, who was a college graduate. He was opened to be adopted in his
childhood. He was almost adopted by a lawyer couple, but later they decided to
adopt a female child. After that he was adopted by a working class couple when
the signed a promissory document accepting to send Steve College. His adopting
parents were poor.
b. Steve Jobs was a very successful man. What
makes a person successful in your view?
Ans:- Steve
Jobs was an American businessman, chairperson and CEO and co-founder of Apple
Inc. Anybody becomes successful if he is hardworking, dedicated to his/her
mission, loves his work, identifies own creative potentials, have courage to do
new things etc.
c. Steve Jobs had many doubts on how he wanted to
lead his life. Do you have the same problem?
Ans:- Yes, I have also same problems as Steve Jobs
used to have. The subjects I am studying are not of my interest. I am studying
accounts because my parents want me to have a job in a good government bank.
But what I want to study is Computer science. I am very much interested in
computer, but my parents forced me to study management. I am thinking of
dropping out college and thinking of rejoin with computer science.
About the Author:
v Steven Paul
Jobs was born on 24 February 1955 at San Francisco, California and died on 5
Oct 2011 at Palo Alto California.
v He is an
American businessman, industrial designer, investor, media proprietor and a
motivational speaker,
v He was a son
of an unwed mother, a graduate student, was adopted by two couples.
v He was brought
up in Cupertino, California, known as Silicon Valley,
v Chairperson,
chief executive & Co founder of Apple incorporation,
v Founder of
NeXT company later known as Pixar Company which produces animated films,
v One of the
pioneer of Micro Computer Technology
v Listed as the
most powerful person in business by Fortune magazine in 2007,
The Speech:
How to Live Before You Die
v This is a transcript
of a famous motivational commencement speech given by Steve delivered at
Stanford University in California, USA in 2005 A.D.,
v This speech in
tripartite structure consists of three autobiographical short stories
(anecdotes) that gives us a message of the importance of time,
v This speech
also teaches us not to be trapped by dogmas of other people,
v This speech
also motivates us to have the courage to follow our heart and intuition which
help us to be what we want to become.
The Speech: How to Live Before you Die
This motivational speech is about just three
autobiographical stories about Steven Jobs which are
i. The First story is about connecting the dots
ii. The Second story is about love and Loss
iii. The Third Story is about death
The First
Story: Connecting the Dots
v Gives reason
for dropping out Reed College (Oregon USA)
v This story
covers the experiences since his birth to the age of 29,
v He was an
unwanted child of an unwed mother, a college graduate student, who wished her
son to be adopted by college graduates
v A layer couple
finally changed their decision to adopt a female child, and later a working
class parents adopted him signing the adoption paper promising him to send
college,
v He went to
Reed college at 17, despite his poor parents were managed to pay for his study,
he dropped out his college because he did not find it valuable for him,
v He was guided
by his curiosity and his intuition, dropping out the college was pretty scary
at the beginning, but later he found it his best decision,
v He was
interested in Calligraphy offered by Reed College, and decided to take a
calligraphy class, he learnt Serif and sans serif typefaces, and he found them
fascinating.
v He used the
beautiful fonts to design his first Macintosh computer, the first computer with
beautiful typography, later Windows copied it.
v He found out
connection among dropping out college, learning calligraphy, and designing the
first Macintosh computer,
v He said that
we can connect dots looking backward and forward, the dots will somehow connect
in your future,
v We must have
trust in our gut, destiny, life, karma etc.,
The Second
Story: Love and Loss
v He tells us
his story of achieving a huge success in Apple Inc., fired from Apple, founding
of the NeXT company, meeting with his beloved, and returning back to Apple
v He found out
what he was longing in his early life,
v He started to
work in his parents' garage at 20, within 10 years, with his friend Steve
Wozniak Apple became a large company worth $2 billion with 4000 employees,
v At 30 he was
fired from his company Apple. He hired a very talented person to run the
company, there was tussle, the Board of Directors sided him, he found it
devastating,
v He was a
public failure, but later he was determined to do something new and innovative,
at 35 he was able to setup another company name Pixar (NeXT) and met his wife
Laurene; Pixar created animated feature film, became the most successful
animation studio,
v Later Apple
bought Pixar, and Steven returned back to Apple.
v He never lost
his faith, hard work, love for creative potential and his work, he got success
with his wonderful family,
Third Story: Death
v This is a
story about facing the death closely and finds the experience to be life's
change agent,
v Inspired by a
quote, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most
certainly be right." This means when one knows that he will be dead soon,
is the the most important tool to help us make a big choice in life.
v Realizing each
day a last day, helped him to do what he was about to do that day, it helped
him to change something,
v The fear of
death helped him to remove all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
embarrassment or failure, only recognizing what is truly important,
v It helps to
avoid the trap of thinking of losing something, helped to follow his heart,
v He was
diagnosed with tumor on his pancreas, a type of cancer which was impossible to
cure, he was no longer living more than six months, doctor advised him to be
prepared to die, one day when he was being diagnosed, his case was found to be
rare case of the cancer, curable with surgery, he had surgery and became fine.
v That was the
time he faced closely the death, nobody wants to die, however no one escapes of
it. But it is the single best invention of life- a life's change agent, clears
the old to make way for the new, every having the fear of death makes you new
clearing the olds.
v Time is
limited and we mustn't waste it just living someone else's life, not to be
trapped by other principles, other's opinions, we must have courage to follow
our heart and intuition.
v Stevens was
inspired by a slogan "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish", found on the back
cover of the book "The Whole Earth catalog" by Stewart Brand. Stay hungry can be interpreted as "stay eager", and stay foolish can be interpreted as "be ready to try new things" or
"be ready to step
out of your comfort zone".
Understanding the text
Answer the following questions.
a. What is the story about Steve Jobs' birth?
Ans:- Steven
Jobs was an unwanted child of of an unwed mother, who was a college graduate
students. He was opened to be adopted by college graduates by his biological
mother. He was about to be adopted by a lawyer couple, but later wanted to
adopt a female child. After that he was adopted by a working class parents
after signing the adoption document promising him to send college.
b. What does he mean he he says, "You can't
connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking
backwards"?
Ans:- In the
second story entitle "Connecting the Dots", Stevens says, "You
can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking
backwards." This means if we try to predict our future we will fail
because it never goes the way we want. What we can do is we can connect our
present and past experience with what we will be doing in the future. Or in
other words he is
trying to say that our choices and mistakes from the past could unexpectedly
lead to your success in the future.
c. What happened when Steven Jobs turned 30?
Ans:- His friend and Steven worked
10 years instantly at his parents' garage to make Apple Inc. a two billion
dollars company employing 4000 employees. At 29 he released the final creation
the Macintosh, but when he turned 30 he was fired from the same company which
established. His labor of his entire adult life was gone because of a person
whom he hired to run the company.
d. Jobs contends that you need to love to do what you do in
order to be great at it. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Ans:- A single moment's effort can't make us
successful, it needs hard work, dedication, trust in our heart and intuition to
become successful. We must love to do what we want to do. We must understand
our heart and trust in our intuition to select our desired path in our life. I
agree with him. Our work fills a large part of our life, and the only way to be
truly satisfied is to do what we believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love
what we do. We must go on searching until we find a suitable work for us.
e. Is death really life's greatest invention?
Ans:- Stevens Jobs said, "Death is very likely the single best
invention of life. It is Life's change agent." No one wants to die but it
is the ultimate destination of all of us. Here "death" is compared
with the single best invention of life. It's also Life's change agent. It
clears out the old to make way for the new.
Reference to the Context
a. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that
follow.
"We have unexpected baby boy;
do you want him?" They said: "Of course."
i. Who was the baby boy?
Ans:- Stevens Jobs was the baby boy.
ii. What does 'do you want him?' mean?
Ans: "Do you want him?",
it means his biological mother asking if adopting parents would like to adopt
Steven Jobs.
iii. Who does 'they' refer to?
Ans:- 'They' refers to the would be
adopting parents of Stevens Jobs.
b. Explain the following lines:
i. "You have to trust in
something- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."
Ans:- This line is taken from the
motivational speech a famous person and CEO of Apple Inc. delivered at Stanford
College in 2005 in commencement address. This line says that we must follow
these four driving forces toward our success. We must have courage or gut to do
something new, must have trust in our destiny because it is connected to our
heart and intuition, know the value of life and focus on works that we love to
do.
ii."Your time is limited, so don't waste it living
someone else's life."
Ans:- This line is taken from the
motivational speech a famous person and CEO of Apple Inc. delivered at Stanford
College in 2005 in commencement address. This line emphasizes on the importance
of time. Our life is short and the success in our life is achieved by utilizing
the precious time. Each and every moment is precious if you want to live a life
being great. It is not good living just as other people live. We must do
something new, original, and unique. You
are not going to live forever. You don't even know how much time you have. We
must stop living our life by the principles of other people. We must stop doing
what we are forced or told to and start finding what we love. We have to do
something, we want to do.
c. What does he mean by "don’t'
settle"?
Ans:- Steven Jobs says, "don't settle."
This is very much similar to the quote "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
We must stay eager try to do something new. We must not be satisfied with what
we achieved. We must love our work to make our work a great work. We mustn't
live in comfort zone always. We must have courage, passion, dedication to
create something new and great by following our heart and intuition. Sometimes life
hits us in the head with a brick, but we mustn't lose faith. We must go ahead
continuously doing what we love to do.
d. Which style of speech is used
by the speaker to persuade the audience?
Ans:- The speech is delivered by CEO of Apple Inc.,
Steven Jobs, delivered at Stanford University in 2005. This is a motivational
speech to the new graduate students at Stanford University in 2005. This speech
is tripartite in structure, consisting in three parts, and each part is an
autobiographical anecdote to communicate a message of resilience and personal
integrity. Though this is a speech, it is written in narrative style and the
speaker is the narrator. He is delivering his message to the audience by using
the personal narrative story telling technique.
e. It is not easy to motivate
others. How do you think Steve Jobs' speech is so inspiring?
Ans:- Motivate
means stimulate or inspire others for doing something. The motivator must be a
role model to be followed like the CEO of Apple Inc. The way Steven Jobs is
motivating students at Stanford University is awesome. Instead of motivating
students merely delivering a speech, he created three stories out his life
experiences which are really inspiring. He communicates many ideas folding into
three stories. Being born from unwed mother, suffered through economic problem,
he becomes able to found a famous company named Apple Inc. worth trillion dollars.
His dedication, courage, love to his work, continuous efforts, and his creative
awareness made him a world famous successful person.
f. Why do you think Steve Jobs
used the personal narrative story telling technique in his speech? What
influence does it have on the audiences?
Ans:-
Story telling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today. It is an interactive art of using
words and actions to untie the elements and images of a story while encouraging
the listener’s imagination. Storytelling is the focal point of any successful
speech or presentation. So I think, Steve Jobs used the personal story telling
technique in his speech. Each and every lines of the speech is influential to
the audiences. The speech encourages us to select the field which love, teaches
us to connect one life experiences to another, failure is a step to become
successful, follow our heart and intuition, value the time, not be trapped in
other's dogmas, eager for creativity, and having courage to do something new.
Reference beyond the text
a. One of Steve Jobs mottos was: 'Think differently'. Can
this make a person succeed in life? What challenges are there in thinking
differently?
Ans:- "Think different" is an advertising
slogan used from 1997 to 2002 by Steven Jobs to promote Apple Computer, Inc.,
now named Apple Inc. Think differently means making something uniquely yours
like Mac computer of Steve Jobs. It is to be bold in our choice, to be
expressive in our views and certainly to be artistically true to ourselves. It
is to be fearless, facing challenges, setting goal of life, making priorities,
taking control, believe is self, not to
be afraid of failure and learning new things. It is obviously a driving force
that leads us towards success. When we try to be different than common, we feel
different challenges. First of all we come out of the comfort zone. We must not
be satisfied with common things. We must uplift us into a next level. We become
failure several times, but we must face the challenges. They are criticized by
the society, family members, friends and relatives. Even they call us crazy or
foolish. But the very craziness or foolishness makes us great one day.
b. What does the slogan "Stay hungry; stay
foolish" mean to you?
Ans:- It's the
slogan Steve Jobs followed and became a famous person. Stay hungry means we
must always be eager to know new things, and try to achieve important things in
our life. We are habituated to remain in a comfort zone living a normal life.
We must have creative awareness and must have courage to shape our creativity.
We must not be satisfied with what we gained. A number of failures may distract
us from our mission, but we must keep on going doing things until we achieve
success. Yes, this is the foolishness of great personalities.
c. What does it mean to be a visionary? What makes
Steve Jobs different from a fortune teller?
Ans:- To be a
visionary means being able to imagine how a country, society, industry etc.
will develop in the future and to plan in a subtle way. It is to be
imaginative, creative, imaginative; farsighted which are the qualities of the
people who think differently. Fortune telling is just a practice of predicting information
about a person's life. This is the
practices of divination. Steve Jobs is different from a fortune teller because he
labored hard to bring his vision true. He set out concrete steps to bring his
vision true. He was imaginative, focused, open minded, fan of new ideas,
positive energizer, never afraid of failures, communicated his vision/dream, so
he was different from a fortune teller.
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