FATE ::: The culminating Sign

KABBALAH EXPLAINS: that Coincidences do not exist.

Nothing is random or "coincidental."

Everything happens for a reason.


This includes both the good and the bad, one of my favorite cited examples is undoubtedly Steve Jobs- (CEO of APPLE and Pixar Studios) speech at the commencement of a University of Stanford graduation;

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.

I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on college tuition.

After six months I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room so I slept on the floor in friend's rooms. I returned coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.

I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at the time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus, every poster, ever label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed.

Because I had dropped out, and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac.

It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally space fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very very clear looking back 10 years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something; your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever- because believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

I was lucky to find what I loved to do early in life. Woz [Steve Wozniak] and I started Apple computers in the basement of my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage to a $2 billion dollar company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just realeased our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I just turned 30, and then I got fired.

I was still in love, so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a begininer again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.

During the next five years I started a company named NeXt, another company called Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXt, and I returned to Apple.

And the technology we developed at NeXt is at the heart of Apples Renaissance, and Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple.

Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship, it only gets better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is one of the most important tools I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarassment 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 to forget that you have something to lose. You are already naked.

There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice, and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you want to become.
Thank you all very much- Steve Jobs



What we believe to be coincidences are actually intelligent connections that were hidden from our perception. We find them astonishing. A strange sense may overcome the person experiencing this phenomenon, a great feeling that everything really does happen for a reason, and gives much hope for the future, that through the good and the bad, everything will work out just the way it should.

I'm TRUSTING in all that practicing I did when I was a kid- THE DOTS ALWAYS CONNECT ;-)



Comparable to how the muscle strengthens, struggle then rest, struggle then rest. We stuggle and we grow from it. We would not be the people we are, our characters would not develop, we would not act, do, and be as we are, if it weren't for the hardships as well.

This all jumped out at me last night, I had just finished working out and sat down to read, when my roommate Brandy projected an idea. She said, ya know Amy, I really liked it the other night when you told me all about Kabbalah and what you were reading, and we both read a lot, from business to spiritual to health, I think it'd be a good idea if we shared what we learned with each other every night like you did. I completely agreed it was a Marvelous Idea & then we both began our reading-

I was starting a new chapter and as fate would have it, it was entitled The Socratic Method. The chapter begins by stating that Socrates believed the best way to cultivate wisdom in his students, was not by him telling them things(didactic instruction) but to have them tell him things (Socratic instruction). It explains that the best way for you to do this is to find a friend to practice with, someone who will actively listen to you and you can speak about what interests you, leading you to a deeper understanding and different perspectives as you "teach/talk."

THIS WAS WILD- I WAS ECSTATIC- it once again affirmed things for me and enstilled even greater hope, desire, belief, and inspiration within me. I am constantly astounded by the truth within the depths of connecting your innerself with the universe.

::Everythinngs worth it in the end if you're doing what you love::

Hope everyone has a wonderful MONDAY morning!!

LOVE always & Forever
:: Amy Lynn ::


"Take the first step in faith, you don't have to see the whole staircase, just the first step." Martin Luther King Jr.