Love: Steve Job’s Supreme Virtue (Fills The Love Bucket)
Sunday, October 30th, 2011 Posted in Heart, The Love Bucket® | No Comments »
Love was Steve Job’s supreme virtue, his god of gods.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
| This is written by Steve Job’s sister as posted in the New York Times on October 30th. It is part of her eulogy given on October 16 at Stanford University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html |
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
… He treasured happiness.
…And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Previous posts on Steve Jobs on the Love Bucket Blog:
http://lovebucketblog.com/1967/the-love-bucket-is-a-little-emptier-with-the-loss-of-steve-jobs/
http://lovebucketblog.com/1987/love-bucket-consideration-private-the-love-between-steve-and-laurene-jobs/
“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.”
— Steve Jobs
Love Bucket Consideration “PRIVATE” The Love between Steve and Laurene Jobs
Thursday, October 6th, 2011 Posted in The Love Bucket® | No Comments »
Yesterday, the love bucket was a little emptier with the loss of Steve Jobs. His family and wife, Laurene, feels this deeply and the world mourns a truly great visionary.
“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.”
— Steve Jobs
This from Robert Scoble in a G+ post today: Tonight I had dinner with a few people who know Steve Jobs’ wife Laurene Powell Jobs and/or worked directly with Steve and they all praised his wife as being both kind and strong.
This photo is one that came up several times at dinner. Shot by Lea Suzuki of the San Francisco Chronicle at the end of the keynote address to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6th shows the strong relationship they both have.
It also shows the emotion Steve had as he finished what would be his last performance on stage.
Over the next few days I bet we get to know Laurene a bit more. I have no idea if she wants the spotlight or not, I imagine that they were so private for a reason, but she will play a key role in the future of Silicon Valley no matter how public she wants to be.
I remember how the Hewletts and Packards reshaped Northern California through their daughter’s interests (the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a great example of that).
Laurene Jobs now is one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful women and we don’t know much about her.
The press is going to push in on her over the next few days, to try to find out more about her.
I hope they give her and their kids space to move and think over the next few weeks as they grieve, but a new chapter in Steve Jobs’ legacy is about to start and she and her kids are in control of that.
I can’t imagine that it’s an easy role to be thrust out into the public, with all eyes looking at you, the way she’s about to be.
Let’s all send some of this love that’s been gushing all over the Internet her way. She’s going to need it now.
The original photo of Steve and Laurena was printed here SFgate.com 6/6/11
(Thank you Robert for sharing this)
Note from Sherrie Rose: If you’ve been following The Love Bucket Blog, you know that there are several considerations and one of them is privacy.
Many celebrities and public figures keep their private lives as private as possible for a multitude of reasons. Our “relationship riches” often stem from our intimate relationship and our closest partner in life. Our spouse is often an anchor during storms and helps you navigate life. The direction of love’s true north is swayed by business and work demands.
This is not a news story. This is the story of when one lover departs first and there is a “hole in the love bucket.” Real love can never be replaced because it leaves a lasting impression.
Now, Laurene must take the helm by herself in a very public way. Her heart is heavy and she is concerned for her three teenage children, Reed, Erin,and Eve. Steve’s daughter Lisa is also heartbroken. My heart goes out to the family with love, sympathy and condolences.
As Robert wrote, “the first one sets the tone for the rest.” Continue to send love to Lauren Powell Jobs and the Jobs family and uplift their spirits.
One’s life can be reduced to a simple “infographic” and as you look on, imagine how fleeting life is that it can be reduced to one page at-a-glance.
The Love Bucket is a little emptier with the loss of Steve Jobs
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 Posted in The Love Bucket® | 1 Comment »
http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/
October 5, 2011
The Love Bucket is emptier with the loss of Steve Jobs. May his memory be for a blessing.
Steve Jobs your love is felt in the hearts (and hands) of many who benefit from your brilliance.
The creative flow has stopped but his spirit lives on.
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." - Steve Jobs
"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." -Steve Jobs
Sherrie Rose
The Love Linguist
* If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com
