Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts

Steve Jobs, the biography by Walter Isaacson, is out.  I saw one of our parishioners at Costco carrying in and surprised I didn't have a copy in my cart as well.

Eventually....

In an interview Isaacson talked about the effect Jobs’ cancer had on his life focus.  It brought a lot of things into focus for him.  This is what Isaacson says:

He talked a lot to me about what happened when he got sick and how it focused him. He said he no longer wanted to go out, no longer wanted to travel the world. He would focus on the products. He knew the couple of things he wanted to do, which was the iPhone and then the iPad.

I've not read the book, but one thing you can say about Steve Jobs is that he was focused.  Sometimes it got in the way of relationships.  Sometimes it got in the way of business partnerships.  But the guy was focused.  Here was someone who wanted to "make a dent in the universe" and he was willing to let everything that would get in the way be pushed aside.

And, I think we can argue that the "couple of things" Jobs was focused on, the iPhone and the iPad, were game changers.  They changed the playing field of cell phones and computing.

If you could focus on just a "couple of things" that would really put a dent in your universe (if not the entire universe) what would they be?

For me, the two things over the last 10 years have been my family and my church.  That's kind painting with a broad brush there.  But I'm not sure I've been more focused than that.

What if, instead, I narrowed it down?

What if my "couple of things" were quality time with my kids and preaching?  Arguably, I could use work on both.  And both could make a dent in my own universe.

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"When I went to school, it was right after the '60s and before this general wave of practical purposefulness had set in... The idealistic wind of the '60s was still at our backs, though, and most of the people I know who are my age have that engrained in them forever."

"It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough -- it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices."

"There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love: 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will."

"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers."

"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 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."

"My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that's what I try to do."

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

"Be a yardstick of quality, some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

"I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It's very character-building."

"I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do."

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful… that's what matters to me." via

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Image via WikipediaYou know how it is with casseroles, particularly with kids?  You spend a great deal of time throwing together the Shepherd's Pie or the Tuna Casserole or, in our family, the Chicken Lindsey.  You follow the directions to a "T" and you put it in the oven for the prescribed time and it's served piping hot to the family.  And what do the kids do, they pick and choose the items they want to eat, leaving a pile of the things they don't enjoy.  Don't the realize that the peas are to be eaten with the chicken to get the right casserole flavor?  How bad could they taste when they are mixed in with all the other flavors and cream of mushroom soup that give the casserole its flavor?  And while we're at it, can't we ask how they find the patience to pull out every small piece of mushroom from the dish, declaring each piece of chicken "clear" before putting it in their mouths?

OK, so maybe it's not always that bad, but I'm usually quite amazed at the ability of my own kids to pick and choose the items they want to eat out of what we get them for dinner. Don't they realize it's all meant to be savored together?

It's the same, I think, with the new dog food we have for our dog, Hurley. (Yes, for any Duke Basketball fans out there, he was named after Bobby Hurley, the great point guard for Duke in the early 90s back when I was at the school. Hurley, the Welsh Terrier dog, high energy and scrappy, was named after Hurley, the man, a high energy and scrappy point guard.) Well, Hurley's food -- one of the COSTCO specials -- got a little more special as of note and, along with the small, crunchy nuggets of lamb and rice goodness has added some softer, almost meat-looking bits. And, while I don't know the makeup of these newer bits, my dog knew right away that this was his favorite part of the dog food. From the first bowl we gave him, he jumps right and devours the food -- but only the softer pieces. I don't know how careful he is with the whole process, but it doesn't take him long to walk away, leaving a mess of crunchy, hard pieces on the floor all around his bowl. It's not unlike the piles of peace or carrots of mushrooms that one of my kids might leave.

But, that's not all, Hurley has the nerve to go back to his bowl, with no soft pieces of goodness left, and look at me, trying to get me to pour more out for him...just so he could eat the soft pieces again and leave the rest. We have a new rule when it comes to feeding the dog: he doesn't get any more food unless he eats ALL of the food...including the pieces he clearly thinks aren't quite as yummy as the meaty chunks he so much enjoys.

I think there actually is a life lesson to be learned here: we really don't get to pick and choose much in this life.

For Christians, we don't have the liberty of choosing who it is that will be beneficiaries of our love. We gotta' love everyone, even those who would be deemed "unloveable."

In our jobs as pastors, we don't get to pick and choose whether we'll do the administrative portions of our job or the educational or the worship. They all have to be done.

We can't just focus all of our energies on the good parts of life, the mountaintops. Life is full of valleys.

Is this all a stretch? Perhaps.

But I have to think of something positive as I sweep more crunchy dog food off of the floor and put it back in the bowl. After all, if I could pick and choose, I'd choose to do something other than this.

Justin David Buzzard writes over at Buzzard Blog about life and the Gospel from what he considers is Western perspective--which is, in and of itself, an interesting perspective.

He has the following in a post about how to best steward the life (and in some cases of our readers, the ministry) that God has given you.  You can begin, he says, by asking three questions:

1. What is the one thing you are now doing that you think you should continue doing? (This should target towards your greatest strength)
2. What is the one thing you are now doing that you think you should stop doing? (This should target towards your greatest liability/time waster/sin/way of harming others/etc.)
3. What is one thing you are not now doing that you think you should start doing? (This should target toward your greatest opportunity/untapped potential/a big new risk)

This has given me some food for thought for the day...and my return to Girdwood in a couple of weeks.

And, frankly, as a lot of my friends enter into their 40s or wind down time at jobs or have kids looking forward to graduation or have babies on the way, these are good questions to have, not only in the back of your mind, but at the front of it.  It's another way of looking at "strengths, weaknesses, and growing edges" that I've looked at off and on.

What is it again, "The unexamined life is not worth living?"  That's it.