WEBVTT

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This program is brought
to you by Stanford University.

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Please visit us at stanford.edu

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Thank You. I am honored to be
with you today at your commencement

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from one of the finest
universities in the world.

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Truth be told I never
graduated from college

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and this is the closest I've ever
gotten to a college graduation.

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Today I want to tell you three
stories from my life. That's it.

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No big deal. Just three stories.

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The first story is about
connecting the dots.

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I dropped out of Reed College
after the first 6 months,

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but then stayed around as a drop-in

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for another 18 months
or so before I really quit.

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So why did I drop out?

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It started before I was born.

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My biological mother was a young,
unwed graduate student,

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and she decided to put me up for adoption.

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She felt very strongly that I should
be adopted by college graduates,

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so everything was all set for me to be
adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife.

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Except that when I popped out they decided

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at the last minute that they
really wanted a girl.

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So my parents, who were on a waiting list,

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got a call in the middle of the night
asking: "We have an unexpected

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baby boy; do you want him?"

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They said: "Of course."
My biological mother later found out that

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my mother had never graduated from college

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and that my father had never
graduated from high school.

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She refused to sign
the final adoption papers.

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She only relented a few months later when

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my parents promised that I would go
to college. This was the start in my life.

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And 17 years later I did go to college.
But I naively chose a college

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that was almost as expensive as Stanford,

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and all of my working-class parents'

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savings were being spent
on my college tuition.

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After six months,
I couldn't see the value in it.

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I had no idea what I
wanted to do with my life

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and no idea how college was going
to help me figure it out.

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And here I was spending all of the money
my parents had saved their entire life.

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So I decided to drop out and trust
that it would all work out OK.

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It was pretty scary at the time,

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but looking back it was one
of the best decisions I ever made.

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The minute I dropped out I could stop

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taking the required classes
that didn't interest me,

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and begin dropping in on the
ones that looked interesting.

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It wasn't all romantic.
I didn't have a dorm room,

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so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms,

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I returned coke bottles for the 5
cent deposits to buy food with,

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and I would walk the 7 miles
across town every Sunday

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night to get one good meal a week
at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

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And much of what I
stumbled into by following

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my curiosity and intuition turned
out to be priceless later on.

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Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that

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time offered perhaps the best
calligraphy instruction in the country.

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Throughout the campus every poster,
every label on every drawer,

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was beautifully hand calligraphed.

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Because I had dropped out and didn't
have to take the normal classes,

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I decided to take a calligraphy
class to learn how to do this.

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I learned about serif
and san serif typefaces,

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about varying the amount of space
between different letter combinations,

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about what makes great typography great.

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It was beautiful, historical,

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artistically subtle in a way that science
can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

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None of this had even a hope of any
practical application in my life.

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But ten years later, when we were
designing the first Macintosh computer,

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it all came back to me.
And we designed it all into the Mac.

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It was the first computer
with beautiful typography.

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If I had never dropped in on
that single course in college,

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the Mac would have never had multiple
typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

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And since Windows just copied the Mac,

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it's likely that no personal
computer would have them.

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If I had never dropped out,

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I would have never dropped
in on this calligraphy class,

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and personal computers might
not have the wonderful typography

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that they do. Of course it
was impossible to connect

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the dots looking forward
when I was in college.

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But it was very, very clear
looking backwards ten years later.

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Again, you can't connect
the dots looking forward;

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you can only connect
them looking backwards.

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So you have to trust that the dots
will somehow connect in your future.

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You have to trust in something,
your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

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Beleiveing that the dots will connect
down the road will give you the confidence

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to follow your heart Even when it
leads you off the well worn path,

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and that will make all the difference.

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My second story is about love and loss.

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I was lucky I found what I
loved to do early in life.

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Woz and I started Apple in my
parents garage when I was 20.

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We worked hard, and in 10 years
Apple had grown from just the two of

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us in a garage into a $2 billion
company with over 4000 employees.

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We had just released our finest
creation the Macintosh

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a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

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And then I got fired.

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How can you get fired
from a company you started?

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Well, as Apple grew we
hired someone who I thought

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was very talented to run
the company with me,

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and for the first year
or so things went well.

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But then our visions of the future began

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to diverge and eventually
we had a falling out.

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When we did, our Board
of Directors sided with him.

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So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out.

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What had been the focus of my entire adult
life was gone, and it was devastating.

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I really didn't know what
to do for a few months.

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I felt that I had let the previous
generation of entrepreneurs

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down - that I had dropped the baton
as it was being passed to me.

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I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce

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and tried to apologize
for screwing up so badly.

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I was a very public failure,

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and I even thought about
running away from the valley.

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But something slowly began to dawn
on me I still loved what I did.

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The turn of events at Apple
had not changed that one bit.

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I had been rejected,
but I was still in love.

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And so I decided to start over.

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I didn't see it then, but it
turned out that getting fired from

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Apple was the best thing that
could have ever happened to me.

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The heaviness of being successful was

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replaced by the lightness
of being a beginner again,

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less sure about everything.

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It freed me to enter one of the
most creative periods of my life.

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During the next five years,
I started a company named NeXT,

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another company named Pixar,

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and fell in love with an amazing
woman who would become my wife.

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Pixar went on to create the worlds first
computer animated feature film, Toy Story,

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and is now the most successful
animation studio in the world.

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In a remarkable turn of events,
Apple bought NeXT,

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I returned to Apple,
and the technology we developed at

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NeXT is at the heart
of Apple's current renaissance.

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And Laurene and I have
a wonderful family together.

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I'm pretty sure none of this would

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have happened if I hadn't
been fired from Apple.

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It was awful tasting medicine,
but I guess the patient needed it.

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Sometimes life hits you in the head
with a brick. Don't lose faith.

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I'm convinced that the only thing
that kept me going was that I loved

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what I did. You've got
to find what you love.

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And that is as true for your
work as it is for your lovers.

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Your work is going to fill
a large part of your life,

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and the only way to be truly satisfied
is to do what you believe is great work.

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And the only way to do great
work is to love what you do.

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If you haven't found it yet,
keep looking. Don't settle.

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As with all matters of the heart,
you'll know when you find it.

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And, like any great relationship,

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it just gets better and better
as the years roll on.

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So keep looking. Don't settle.

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My third story is about death.

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When I was 17, I read a quote
that went something like:

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"If you live each day
as if it was your last,

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someday you'll most certainly be right."

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It made an impression on me,
and since then, for the past 33 years,

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I have looked in the mirror every morning

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and asked myself: "If today
were the last day of my life,

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would I want to do what
I am about to do today?"

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And whenever the answer has been
"No" for too many days in a row,

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I know I need to change something.

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Remembering that I'll be dead
soon is the most important

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tool I've ever encountered to help
me make the big choices in life.

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Because almost everything all
external expectations, all pride,

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all fear of embarrassment or failure -

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these things just fall
away in the face of death,

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leaving only what is truly important.

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Remembering that you are
going to die is the best

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way I know to avoid the trap
of thinking you have something to lose.

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You are already naked. There is no
reason not to follow your heart.

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About a year ago I
was diagnosed with cancer.

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I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and
it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas.

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I didn't even know what a pancreas was.

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The doctors told me this was almost

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certainly a type of cancer
that is incurable,

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and that I should expect to live
no longer than three to six months.

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My doctor advised me to go home
and get my affairs in order,

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which is doctor's code for prepare to die.

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It means to try to tell
your kids everything you thought

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you'd have the next 10 years
to tell them in just a few months.

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It means to make sure
everything is buttoned

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up so that it will be as easy
as possible for your family.

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It means to say your goodbyes.

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I lived with that diagnosis all day.

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Later that evening I had a biopsy, where
they stuck an endoscope down my throat,

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through my stomach and into my intestines,

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put a needle into my pancreas
and got a few cells from the tumor.

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I was sedated, but my wife, who was there,

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told me that when they viewed
the cells under a microscope

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the doctors started crying
because it turned out to be

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a very rare form of pancreatic
cancer that is curable with surgery.

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I had the surgery
and thankfully I'm fine now.

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This was the closest
I've been to facing death,

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and I hope its the closest
I get for a few more decades.

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Having lived through it,

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I can now say this to you with
a bit more certainty than when

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death was a useful but purely
intellectual concept: No one wants to die.

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Even people who want to go to heaven
don't want to die to get there.

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And yet death is the
destination we all share.

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No one has ever escaped it.
And that is as it should be,

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because Death is very likely
the single best invention of Life.

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It is Life's change agent. It clears
out the old to make way for the new.

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Right now the new is you,
but someday not too long from now,

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you will gradually become
the old and be cleared away.

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Sorry to be so dramatic,
but it is quite true.

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Your time is limited, so don't
waste it living someone else's life.

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Don't be trapped by dogma which is living

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with the results of other
people's thinking.

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Don't let the noise of others'
opinions drown out your own inner

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voice. And most important,

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have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition.

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They somehow already know
what you truly want to become.

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Everything else is secondary.

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When I was young,

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there was an amazing publication
called The Whole Earth Catalog,

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which was one of the
bibles of my generation.

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It was created by a fellow named
Stewart Brand not far from here

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in Menlo Park, and he brought
it to life with his poetic touch.

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This was in the late 1960's, before
personal computers and desktop publishing,

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so it was all made with typewriters,
scissors, and polaroid cameras.

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It was sort of like
Google in paperback form,

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35 years before Google came
along: it was idealistic,

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overflowing with neat tools,
and great notions.

00:13:45.490 --> 00:13:48.397
Stewart and his team put out several
issues of The Whole Earth Catalog,

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and then when it had run its course,
they put out a final issue.

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It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.

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On the back cover of their final issue

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was a photograph of an early
morning country road,

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the kind you might find yourself
hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.

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Beneath it were the words:
"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

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It was their farewell message
as they signed off. Stay Hungry.

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Stay Foolish. And I have
always wished that for myself.

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And now, as you graduate to begin
anew, I wish that for you.

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Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

00:14:57.500 --> 00:15:00.890
The preceding program is copyrighted
by Stanford University.

00:15:01.080 --> 00:15:03.760
Please visit us at stanford.edu