PERHAPS MY GREATEST LESSON

While I was graduating from Brewster High School in New York, Steve Jobs was speaking at the? Palo Alto High School graduation.? I recently came across the transcript of that speech. Do I wish that I was in attendance or that he delivered the commencement speech for my high school graduation?? Sure.? But perhaps it would have been all the wrong time for me to hear it and I wouldn’t have appreciated it as much as I do sitting here today. ?

A series of events in my life have led me back to some long term relationships I’ve had - some personal and some business.? I strongly believe they have not been a “series of events” at all, but rather part of the learning journey or the arc of life that I have been creating and following for the past 44 years.?

It can mostly be summed up by one statement buried deep within that hour long speech”

“What you follow with your heart will indeed come back to make your life much richer.”

Steve Jobs wasn’t just a brilliant technologist, incredible creator, or successful CEO. Job’s was a thinker. He experienced high high’s and low low’s. But he was a master of packaging those experiences and learning from them. He shared with the 270 students that graduated that day a lesson that resonates with me - even 26 years later.

He told the group to, “make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.” Ultimately your career should not be separate from what you love to do in life. I often talk about building an integrated life - one where you love your work and your life equally, such that neither imposes on the other, but rather builds and compliments each other. If we don’t make what we love our work, we won’t put in the time and energy that it will take to build. We will be focused on the goal, the reward, the achievement, and the end of the journey, in lieu of the actual journey.?

Equally important to the journey are the people that are on the journey with us. If people are your heart, then follow people. Jobs says that those people will come back to make your life richer. These are the people we choose and the people who choose us. This is however mutually exclusive. We must find the people we want to do life with and want to do life with us at the same time. It’s what makes a relationship a relationship.?

While Jobs spoke to that group of young adults he reminded them that “the journey is the reward…the reward is in the crossing the rainbow.” Even after he received his “pot of gold” he realized that the gold was not the reward. The goal, the achievement, the milestones, the result was not the reward. If any of those things become our reward, then once reached, we will “go looking for another rainbow to cross.” We will be convinced that we must begin our search for the next pot of gold.?

But our journey is our rainbow.? Enjoy all the colors. The primary colors, the blended colors, the unexpected colors of our life. We need to stop chasing the pot at the end, and enjoy the arc of the journey we are individually on and creating. The people on that arc may change along the way. My recent experience is that they also at times show back up. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe they were always there, and I slowed down long enough on the arc to make sure that relationships matter as much as I know they do and told myself they did.?

I have recently found myself spending more time with friends from decades ago, collaborating on the future with business partners of the past, and enjoying myself doing things that remind me of what got me to where I am today. It’s a focus on the arc and not the pot of gold.?

For those that have been part of my life for decades, thank you for being on this arc with me. For those that were part of my life in the past, thank you for being part of this arc, and I look forward to a future walk on this arc with you. For those that just joined this arc with me, thank you. I promise this will be an amazing arc.

Jobs ended by saying, “think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world.? You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.”?

Remember, “what you follow with your heart will indeed come back to make your life much richer.”

This week, let’s all agree to blaze.

Chris Suarez