An Era Ends As Steve Jobs Dies

Although everyone knew that Steve Jobs was on his way out of this place called earth, it still came as a shock when his death was announced. I saw him the day he announced his resignation from Apple. On television that is! He had lost so much weight. He used to be quite chunky and we all saw the weight slowly dropping off. At first it was said he had hormonal imbalance which is kind of true. According to Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN”s medical advisor and a man I love to hate), the kind of pancreatic cancer Steve had caused his hormones to behave abnormally. But from all indications, his popular black turtle neck shirt and jeans were not as fitting as they used to be. But then again, people had hope.

So the announcement of his passing on was a great shock to the whole world. ‘Twitter’ actually froze for a while. It was bombarded by ‘twits’. ‘Twits’? While growing up back in the days, ‘twit’ was an insult. A ‘twit’ was a foolish person. I don’t know at what point ‘twit no became a fashionable word and those who ‘twitter’ are considered ‘techy’. Even President Obama has a twitter account. If you don’t have a twitter account then you must be a dinosaur.

Anyway back to Steve Jobs, he impacted the world so much that a business he started in his parent’s garage grew to become the best known brand in the world. The shares of Apple have done better than Exxon-Mobil which had the title last year. They say that $10,000.00 worth of shares 10 years ago is now worth $640,000.00. They say that is about 9000% growth if there is anything like that in percentages. So what started as business by him and his best friend Wozniak in cluttered space is now one of the most reliable brands worldwide.

The fact that Steve died is not for me the most thing. What has impacted me is the kind of life style he had. Anytime I saw him on TV especially at the launch of a new product his humility struck me. He always wore his black turtleneck shirt and blue jeans. This is a man worth over $350 b. He believed in his dreams and visions. He stopped at nothing. After he got kicked out of Apple by the person he employed to move the company forward he told himself that failure just gives one the opportunity to start all over again.

In a speech he gave at Stanford university (he was a university drop out) he told the student body ‘to find what you love and do it’. Doing what you believe in is great work he told them. ‘Keep looking, don’t settle’. I guess that is what makes one great. That is what visionaries and innovators are made of. Makes me think of the average Nigerian child. Does our environment enable the ‘keep looking don’t settle’ norm? The issues that we deal with in Nigeria are not the same that they have to deal with here.

If Steve was a Nigerian child would he have become who he was? His parents didn’t have an education. He would have had to fetch water, go in search of diesel for generator, deal with malaria, and help out in his mother’s store etc. before getting to do his homework. Then dropping out of university would have been frowned on. He dropped out because he realized that the little money his parents had was been wasted on his university education. So he dropped out and started attending courses in the same university, this time attending the ones he was interested in. Can that be done in our university system? Without the lecturers going on strike in between? I don’t think so. That is why God situated him in the United States so that I can have an IPad and use it effectively. Once I have it I can go anywhere, without carrying a huge luggage. It has all my book, my Bible, music, email, documents, movies, pictures, videos, maps, newspapers, Facebook even twitter. I wish he also figured out how to download perfume and cosmetics real time. But then who knows? Maybe he did and even more. He has over 300 patents pending.

My daughter told me that textbook will soon have Steve Jobs and his inventions and innovations. I totally agree. So I leave you with a few of his quotes. ‘Your time is limited don’t live someone else’s life. ‘Stay hungry; stay foolish in search of what you love’.

Ada Wikina, Ph.D., is

Consultant Sociologist,

Dc’Kra Dynamics

Consulting LLC,

United States of America.

Ada Wikina