I’m sad sitting here reading about the passing of Steve Jobs, who I never personally met. This sadness, is probably a simular feeling that others have had throughout history whenever a strong leader and visionary has passed, leaving us in a worried wonder of what if, and what might have been.
In retrospect, everything is obvious. But we fail to recognize that it is genius that makes it obvious. It took Isaac Newton to make gravity obvious after thousands of years of ignorance, same with Einstein, same with Jefferson and Adams, same with many countless others, less famous, but who all shared something in common – they refused to settle for the accepted answer. They chose to prove to themselves and to the world one basic truth: that we live in a world of our own making.
If you do not like something, it is within your power to change it. Right now you can change it. It does not require an act of congress, no government grant, it just requires you, rolling up your sleeves and doing the work. A loose board, a creaky floor, an inefficient process at work, a single missing pixel in the website your designing, a new world – design it, build it! It takes genius to make the obvious more, well “obvious” – but that genius is 100% human and its a crown any one of us can wear. I will miss Steve Jobs.