Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in mavericksaggy's LiveJournal:

Thursday, October 30th, 2008
1:07 pm	Mehfil शह सवार ही गिरते हैं मैदाने जंग में, वो तिफ्र क्या गिरे जो चलते हैं घुटनो के बल पर मंज़िल भी उनकी थी, रास्ता भी उनका था, एक में अकेला था, काफिला भी उनका था , साथ साथ चलने की सोच भी उनकी थी, फिर रास्ता बदलने का फ़ैसला भी उनका था, आज क्यो अकेला हू, दिल सावाल करता हैं, लोग तो उनके थे, क्या खुदा भी उनका था | Current Mood: thoughtful (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
5:11 pm	Love Quote Following Love quote by Gabriel Garcia Marquez says a lot rather it says almost everything, enjoy :-) "To him she seemed so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell". Current Mood: touched (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
7:45 pm	Take Charge of your Life Sadguru Says Whenever things don’t happen the way you want them to, there is a temptation to name it destiny. This is how you deal with failure; you are consoling yourself. Whatever situations you are living in, to be human means that you can mould situations the way you want them. But today, most people in the world are moulded by the situations in which they exist. That is simply because they exist in reaction to the situations they are placed in. So their question will be, “Why was i placed in such a situation? Is it my bad luck, is it my destiny?” Everything that you know now as “myself” is just an accumulation. Your body is just an accumulation of food. What you call “my mind” is an accumulation of impressions that you have gathered through the five senses. What you accumulate can be yours; it can never be you. What is you is yet to come into your experience; it is in an unconscious state. You are not even 100 per cent conscious of what you have accumulated. You are trying to live your life through what you have gathered, not through who you are. You have acquired certain tendencies depending upon the type of impressions you have gathered. This can be changed. Irrespective of your current tendencies, your past experience of life, your genetics, irrespective of who your parents were, where you were born, where you grew up, if you do certain things with yourself, you can change this. You can completely rewire yourself in 24 hours’ time. A century ago, many things that people believed to be destiny or God’s will, like diseases, infections and death are today in our hands because we have taken charge of certain things. What we call technology today is just this: Within the laws of nature, everything on the outside that can be taken charge of, we will take charge of someday. As there is an outer technology, there is an inner technology or inner engineering. Everything that this life is, is naturally happening to a certain law. If you know what the nature of life within you is, you can completely take charge of the way it happens. Then would you let any unpleasantness happen to you? Unpleasantness is happening to you in the form of anger, fear, anxiety and stress because your basic faculties — your body, mind, emotions and your life energies — are doing their own thing as if they don’t belong to you. It doesn’t matter who you are. Life doesn’t work for you unless you do the right things. Existence is not judgmental. Good, bad, all these judgments are essentially human and socially conditioned. Every society has its own idea of what is good and bad, but existence is treating all of us the same way. Whoever is receptive right now gets the bounty of life. The whole aspect of yoga is to make you receptive. If your experience of life transcends the limitations of the physical, you become available to Grace. Suddenly you function like magic. Other people may think you are magic but you know you are just beginning to become receptive to a different dimension of life. And for everybody, this possibility is wide open. When it comes to outside realities, all of us are differently capable. What you can do, somebody else cannot do; what someone else can do, you cannot do. But when it comes to inner possibilities, every human being is equally capable. You are not any less capable than a Buddha or a Jesus or anybody for that matter. All of us have the same inner capabilities, unfortunately never explored, never accessed. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
4:15 pm	Sadhana Sadguru says "When a person doesn't seek anything but still he can act totally, with utmost intensity, then there is a way. If you seek, then something else happens; you get entangled with this, then nothing happens. So the whole process of spiritual dimension or the path is just because people don't get this distinction. They have a mind, which doesn't allow them to be intense and involved with anything where there is nothing to get. That is the reason why it seems to be a great sadhana or struggle; otherwise, it is nothing. If you see this aspect, if you just eliminate this one calculation – "What can I get?" and simply you know how to throw yourself into everything that is around you, then 90% of the sadhana is over in one stroke. Simply, its over." What do you think isn't the statement above encompass the simple truth of our life. Mind 'O' Mind, you are good, you are great, you have made the human civilization accelerate but too much of you everywhere doesn't fit the puzzle right. At least few things in our life should be done with an intensity and focus that mind doesn't have time to mitigate. Current Mood: pensive (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
10:13 pm	Sex and Divine CAVEAT - Anything written underneath is nothing but just an interpretation of discourse on the topic by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev (Isha foundation), since this is my understanding / viewpoint, so it is certainly susceptible to error and open to disagreement, please use your wisdom to wade through and blame is all mine :). What do you think is the relation, Is Sex a taboo and Divine a consecration. Doesn't most of us publicly subscribe to camp Divine and shun the Sex, doesn't matter whether we crave for Sex in personal life, but public face fears to admit the truth and would always prefer to sing high pitch song on Divinity, who cares whether most of us can even spell it right, but thats the Yo thing. All the religions superficially understood have a taboo in one or the other form and they want their gods to be anyone who doesn't appeared through Sex, as that is only meant for humans and animals not the revered gods, doesn't that says it all why we have so much disrespect for fellow beings. Do we really understand the difference or is there really a difference, forget the hypocritical rules of society. If nature has constituted both and nature is something good and positive, then how can one be good and other bad. Hmmm, so, there's a certain mismatch in our understanding, we publicly revile what many of us desire and that doesn't really sound wisdom, do you agree, then vote for me :) Don the thinking hat and look little bit inside, truth is right there. Our life is nothing but a game that nature has created and plays for its own fun, otherwise duality couldn't be explained at all, why male / female, why not just one type and there's no issue whatsoever, since everyone is same or for that matter why not many type, so as to have more intriguing fun, but there's a sound reason, I think two is manageable, but the mess many would create is unthinkable, in fact nowadays even two is getting heavy on nature and just one is bland with no spice, thats boring isn't it. Let us understand a little bit deeper, Sex is nothing but requirement of human body and procreation is the natural result. No one can deny the need part, but mind it not the need of human mind. However what happens in the confusion of the philosophy that we all want to master is that we elevate the sex to the level of mind and start thinking a lot about it, when it is not supposed to be and result is either desperation to have it or avoid it when none of them is a naturally sound situation. Take example of animals, have you ever seen them thinking about Sex 24/7, they just do it when they need it or else they are happy and in fact thats how nature wants us to be, when mind intervenes then we start embellishing things with frills and after sometime only frills matter not the thing. Animals do sex without any frills in its most natural state. Having said that I don't sneer the existence of society, we humans owe a lot to it and lots of animals have it, idea out here is to deny the imposed rules out of misinterpreted and misled notions. I would say till the point we have clarity of mind that what is the essence of Sex, as it is created by the nature for human existence, we can certainly locate Divine within it and will be more comfortable and open with an unequivocal philosophy. So, even if you have to create your own philosophy, then for god and human sake let it be in rhythm with mother nature not in friction with it. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
10:14 pm	We Shall Overcome - Hum Honge Kamyab More than a song this is a prayer for me - thats what i truly feel for the world we live in ... May god bless all ... Hope the good sense Prevail ... Amen Reference - just googled a bit and got it from this blog , i truly owe this person - http://dinsan.info/blog/song/  We shall overcome We shall overcome We shall overcome some day  Oh, deep in my heart I do believe We shall overcome some day . We’ll walk hand in hand We’ll walk hand in hand We’ll walk hand in hand some day . We shall all be free We shall all be free We shall all be free some day  We are not afraid We are not afraid We are not afraid some day  We are not alone We are not alone We are not alone some day  The whole wide world around The whole wide world around The whole wide world around some day  We shall overcome We shall overcome We shall overcome some day   In hindi   hum honge kamyab, hum honge kamyab, hum honge kamyab, ek din Oh, man mein hai visvas, pura hai visvas hum honge kamyab, ek din hum chalenge sath sath, dale hathon mein hath hum chalenge sath sath, ek din Oh, man mein hai visvas, pura hai visvas hum chalenge sath sath, ek din nahin dar kisika aaj, nahin-hai bhay kisika aaj nahin dar kisika aaj, e din Oh, man mein hai visvas, pura hai visvas nahin dar kisika aaj, e din hogi shanti charon or, hogi shanti charon or, hogi shanti charon or, ek din Oh, man mein hai visvas, pura hai visvas hogi shanti charon or, ek din ——————————————————————————————————————————- Lyrics derived from Charles Tindley’s gospel song “I’ll Overcome Some Day” (1900), and opening and closing melody from the 19th-century spiritual “No More Auction Block for Me” (a song that dates to before the Civil War). According to Professor Donnell King of Pellissippi State Technical Community College (in Knoxville, Tenn.), “We Shall Overcome” was adapted from these gospel songs by “Guy Carawan, Candy Carawan, and a couple of other people associated with the Highlander Research and Education Center, currently located near Knoxville, Tennessee. Current Mood: optimistic Current Music: Hum Honge Kamyab (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 31st, 2007
6:00 pm	Isha Yoga Today, i am updating my journal after a long gap, was somehow not motivated enough to do much all this while, was somehow just existing. Last week, i happened to undergo an initiation course in Yoga by an organization called Isha Foundation, get more details at : http://www.ishafoundation.org/ I have planned to scribble down all that, i have learned, for me its truly life changing - facts of human life that we either fail to understand, deliberately overlook, does not have guts to follow or are foolish enough not to realize. All of us like to talk big, aim big, have 100 of pre conditions for achievements and rake up big excuses when it finally comes to get the act together. I have to complete this in number of readable and manageable posts, to start with : What's Isha Yoga ? A science of meditation that helps us realize our higher self or what we call Ishwar - source of true and perpetual ecstasy in human life - dotted with innumerable issues every moment we live, which we truly don't live, just somehow sustain . As part of Yoga, i have learned something called "Sambhavi Mahamudra" - devised by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev - an easy way for today's man to : -> Balance the prana (energy) within oneself . Responsible for all kinds of mental state. -> Develop a clear focus without a clutter . -> Do work without expectation (Karma Yoga - By Srimad Bhagwad Geeta). -> Learn to live in and enjoy the moment - that's millionth part of the second - as we never know what's in store for next one - it's only current moment that's inevitable, which if we accept then we are in sync everything - there are no issues at all . Mind it living in a moment does not mean - not to plan for the future, only fools don't but its about concentrating on current Karma to make that future reality instead of perceving a non existent future cobbled up from past experiences of failure in life. Sambhavi means twilight - that's the time when Day is merging into Night and that's the time when we can get the perspectives of either which is not possible in either only day or night alone . To end this part : What does the balance of prana means ? -> Every human being has qualities, which are masculine or feminine, divided by nature - masculine qualities deal mostly with aggression and feminine qualities deal with emotions. Everybody has the balance of prana shift between them at regular interval of 40 min., try this out ( Left Nostril - Feminine / Right Nostril - Masculine) , place a finger below them and breathe very slowly, no deliberate breathing and during different times in a day you will find one nostril breathing more than the other. Examples are Sun related qualities, which is a source (Masculine) and Moon related qualities, which is a reflection (Feminine), every human being has them and mostly not balanced . Mind it - Masculine and Feminine surely does not mean only for Men or Women, both have them and they depict different nature, behavior under different conditions. Ultimate goal is to have a perfect balance, that what leads to true harmony of mind , body , soul and cosmic universe in which we exist or one that exists within us . This is a truth whole universe is within you, its all the matter of realization and that's where enlightened humans like Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev differs from the rest . I think enough for now , more in next post , Till then - Keep Balancing well :-) . Maverick Current Mood: peaceful Current Music: AUM (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, October 27th, 2006
12:45 pm	Mukkamal Jahan Heard it earlier : Kabhi kisi ko Mukkamal jahan nahi milta , Kisi ko ____ tho kisi ko ____ nahi milta . Mera yeh article bhi mukkamal nahi hain , Abhi soch raha hu woh kya kya hain jo , Mein hud par chahta tha , Jaan chidaktha tha , Lekin Mukkamal nahi hua . Sab kuch kiya , dil ka dard liya , Lekin Mukkamal nahi hua . You must be having ample scenes from your very own life when your highly craven , most coveted dreams rounded off to zilch . But believe me : That's very much the essence of life , That's what encompass beauty in the mess . It still goes on with a zeal , with new set of dreams always there to be sunk deep down the unfathomable depths . Keep Dreaming - That keeps us alive . Maverick Current Mood: artistic (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
7:39 pm	Reality Knocks - Indian Democracy II This is the conclusive part of two-part article on Indian democracy. Here, I will discuss an interesting ramification and conspicuous irony stemming out of the issues discussed in the first. Paradox is huge, but it’s up to us to understand and fill the lacunae before it’s too late for a corrigendum. I will start with the deduction in the first part - deliberate non voters in a democracy like India are non entity for the institutional set up and thus can’t be endowed with all the fundamental privileges, that a true scribe of democracy deserve. Idea is, as simple as to differentiate, between performing and non-performing assets of an organization. No points for guessing, which is more important. Let’s start with the hot issue of reservation to uplift the people being denied their rightful, over the period of centuries due to social structure in our country, as claimed by the most vociferous supporters of the concept, across the political groups. Now why do you think, that all the anti reservation clamor, just remains a law and order issue, need to be suppressed using force and there’s no consideration of the policy review even after decades of implementation and misuse in various aspects. Answer, is what we had already discussed, anti-reservation group doesn’t make a slightest dent on the political configuration at various levels, then why bother with something as feeble and ineffectual as this. Frankly saying, I whole heartedly support reservation, even after being from non reserved category, till the point it can be a potent tool to bring up the downtrodden, help us equitably distribute the product of economic progress and globalization, thus creating a well balanced society. However, I’m strongly against the misuse, where generations of same person reuse, for personal benefits and deserving millions still dream of it. Actually the poor millions are important part of vote bank and democratic setup and still nobody bothers to help them out of abject poverty. Well, that’s where’s the irony, who really want a well educated human being as part of their vote bank, issue is, educated person may question the policies and decisions, will spread awareness, inform peers regarding pros and cons of a step and frankly saying who really needs a headache, in a well set political utopia. That explains, why we don’t have politicians who fight for reservations for poor, needy and deprived children in well-equipped private schools and nurture their talent at that very basic level itself. Otherwise what can explain the political moves to reserve seats in institutes of higher learning, but not concentrate upon for imparting basic primary education. They clamor for reserving private entities too, but don’t bother to provide free quality education at primary level, child labor is not eradicated in reality, on paper everything is ideal and rules are there for everything, but ground reality speaks for near zilch implementation. This explains it all for kids, who don’t have source for primary education and security and are expected to clear IIM’s and IIT’s, in process frittering away consecrated seats out there too. Ask Peter Parker, to be a Super Hero, without even a spider bite. Let’s have a pragmatic approach. Idea is to utilize the education that empowered us, in right direction, beside personal growth, strengthen the society, have the right people at the helm of the affairs. Finally, we can discuss all this multiple times with extremely strong and convincing arguments on multiple TV shows, but believe me that’s not a mandatory viewing for the policy makers of this country. So, once again, I exhort upon you to do the right thing, when it matters most – exert your franchise. Jai Hind!!! Maverick Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
2:58 pm	Reality Knocks – Indian democracy I There was a snap poll on one of the prominent news channel and all the active citizen with an easy access, to the latest gadgets, took part to overwhelmingly confirm that our nation and system epitomize vibrant, all inclusive democracy and there was reason to feel good, especially when we compared to the prevailing situation in various other parts of the world, which are either under dictatorship or anarchy. Somehow, I was not totally convinced, there seemed to be a gap between projected idealism and extant reality. I questioned myself, searched some statistics and found that in actual polls to select the people representatives at various levels, average voting percentage merely reaches 50% of the eligible population. I got curious to know the finer details, is it the poor infrastructure in remote regions of our country, illiteracy, citizens complacence with the status quo or regional factors that leads to the non participation in the democratic set up. However, reality is completely different; it was an eye opener for me and will be for all who live in Alice’s wonderland. If various facts are collated, then voting participation is highest in remote and rural areas of our country, where infrastructure and good means of transport are still a distant dream and voters have to ply miles to stand in long queue of an isolated polling booth to exert their right and participation in creation of the democratic system. On the other hand, it reduces with the urbanization of the area and as the standard of living increases, as people gets access to good infrastructure, good public and private transport. As the highly paid working executives of public and private organizations get a day off to exert their most important and fundamental duty. What an irony, isn’t it? There could be various other reasons to explain the statistics, but the baseline is the attitude, which is the buzzword for most of the literate population in our country, but alas that’s not in spirit, it’s the population on the other end of the spectrum that takes the lead and is exemplary in their action and deeds. They are the one who maintain and sustain the true democratic nature of the system and it’s high time for due recognition and unveil their modest efforts for sustaining our democratic set up. There is another interesting ramification in this regard, for most of my highly educated and extremely well paid friends working in big brand MNC, who consider the voting day as a holiday to take rest without exerting their franchise, consider it as a low priority duty and don’t even bother to get themselves added to the voter list. Frankly saying, they don’t really exist for the system per se, they are the non entity for our democracy and are not suppose to ask for any rights or privileges. They are not even supposed to protest, object or exert opinion for anything that’s open for discussion in the public domain. I will discuss this part in depth in the second edition, however right now it’s important for all of us to understand the essence of the “vibrant democracy” in word and spirit, it’s our participation that makes or breaks it, that adds more vibrancy, that makes us count and gives us the moral right to stand for or against anything. Participating regularly in TV polls and winning prizes is fine as a fun and stress reliever, but as a popular saying goes, do it when and where it counts most. You may be one in million, but that’s where it starts and will surely have a cumulative impact. It’s high time for our generation to do some soul searching and decide upon the legacy of attitude and responsibility to be passed on. Jai Hind !!! Maverick Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
10:13 pm	Steve Job - Stay foolish , Stay hungry ==================================== Steve Jobs - stay fool , stay hungry ==================================== Stanford Report, June 14, 2005 'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calli-graphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NEXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I re tuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: 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. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much. (Steve Jobs) Current Mood: impressed (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 22nd, 2006
3:46 pm	Women ( Holds true for most of the Women i know , but , dedicated to my dear mother ) Women , thy name is mystery , the unfathomable creature , that god has sculpted with great diligence. care , may substitute but it lacks the height . love , may take the place but it's short in sanctity . tough , may replace but it's not that enduring . what else should I say , it's too holy and divine , the consecrated human race , that is ineffable by my means . Maverick Current Mood: pensive (Comment on this)