I remember landing in Amsterdam on October 5, 2011 after being in the air for almost 10 hours. I turned on my iPhone and AP news alerts started pinging my phone as happens when a “world event” takes place. I read through the Fox News, CNN, Sky News alerts and articles, and read through my Twitter and Facebook feeds. As we pulled up to the gate I had already received the text below from Deborah (yes I have all my text messages from years ago), a message received in my hand sitting on a runway in the Netherlands thousands of miles away from Auburn, Alabama.
As we pulled up to the gate I took the photo above of the Delta flight parked next to our gate, pulled it into my Camera+ app, put a boarder around it and posted it to Instagram. At this point I had already checked my email, responded to a few emails, and looked up our connecting flight information. All from a small piece of metal, glass, and plastic that didn’t exist a few years earlier.
This may sounds like a lot of poetic musings for a phone, but for some reason my mind wasn’t ready for this particular piece of news that morning, and it confused me. I was on my way to Africa, and the only reason I was going to have any personal connection with my wife halfway around the world was because Steve Jobs had decided he was going to invent and create what I was holding in my hand.
Here was a man who shared no convictions with my faith, a brilliant man who had no understanding beyond the pluralistic view of Christianity known for centuries mixed with his version of Buddhism. He just couldn’t go beyond his own understanding and even made this statement to Isaacson:
“The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,” he told me. “I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t.”
Yet I still felt some connection, even if a minor one, with Jobs, sitting on a runway in Europe, as if the plane full of people melted away leaving me and my connection with Jobs sitting in my hand. He shared none of my beliefs, yet he changed the world, my world, and still does on a daily basis. After I got home from Africa I read, back to back, the biography on Steve Jobs and the biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Metaxas. What an amazing contrast of times and cultures, beliefs, and both had the ability to change the world. Ultimately in death, as we all will do some day, either looking to what lies ahead, one perhaps clinging to life here on earth, so did these two great men.
I boarded the plane to Africa, still thinking about Jobs’ fate and wrote this as we took off.
The biggest surprise to me so far [on this trip], was upon landing, finding out that Steve Jobs died. I was truly saddened to hear this. I know we are all temporary to this world, but this man, who for all accounts wasn’t a believer, changed the world. He forever changed the way the world communicates, how we are connected with each other, and the reason I can talk to Deborah from this plane in Europe while she is in Auburn.
He affected so many people through his innovations. How are we to greave his death? I’m saddened over his death as if he was someone I knew personally, and at the same time I really don’t know why either. Death seems so imminent for all of us, especially when you hear about Jobs dying at 59. I know why we die, the fall created this and Christ had to die for us, but it’s still so hard to understand. I didn’t even know Jobs, but I will miss him. The new iPhone announcement yesterday had people wanting to see Jobs at the event, people who never knew, other than God, that he would die the very next day. I pray for his soul.
I’m not even really sure why I write this today other than to acknowledge the gravity this one person had on our world. A person I vastly disagree with on almost all aspects of life, yet he was someone who had a positive impact on so many people.
Jobs once said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” which really became his whole life philosophy, and was carried on today by Tim Cook and Apple with the video on their front page and the letter below. What other for-profit company would take down their entire front page just to show a 2 minute tribute video. Simplicity and sophistication.
40 responses to “On Apple’s Tribute to Steve Jobs One Year Later”
Good article, but I find your correlation as follows odd: (”but this man, who for all accounts wasn’t a believer, changed the world. He forever changed the way the world communicates, how we are connected with each other”). I cannot see how being a believer of one of the world’s religions should influence the way Jobs changed the world in this context..
We discussed this in some of the previous comments, and I agree, in essence it doesn’t have anything to do with what Jobs did or didn’t do with Apple. It was a correlation I was making with a person whom I had, or would normally have, fewer connections with… i.e. he is a billionaire, I’m not, I’m a Christian, he was not, he lived in California, I certainly do not. Along with that, most of this article was written in the emotion of the event when it took place, it was not filtered for generally accepted politically correctness at the time of the writing (see some of the previous comments on the subject of “connections”). Thanks for the discussion.
Well I’m really with you about not filtering. That would be unfair to you, as the writer, and of course would not be the role of the serious reader to want that. Nevertheless, it remains an interesting perspective – not that there could be anything wrong with that, but there seemed to be an overall tone of Steve Jobs being creative and successful DESPITE not being a Christian. Thanks for replying. I enjoy the chat in a philosophical way – and agree with your points.
Right, on that particular point, “Jobs was successful DESPITE not being a Christian” you are totally correct, that was not my point in the slightest. Obviously there were (and are) a huge number of people who are incredibly smart, and have contributed enormously to the world and don’t share my beliefs (for some reason Diana comes to mind right off the top). To that there really isn’t any correlation to intelligence and faith, there are certainly some really smart people on all sides (or to put it in the negative, all sides have their share of really stupid people as well lol). Thanks for the convo.
Really great post, definitely FP worthy.
Thanks! It was pretty cool to see it up there.
well written and thought provoking. Thank you!
No thank you 🙂
You know I really agree with this. Religion issues aside, I too felt a personal sadness when I learned of his death. In fact, reading this still nearly brought a tear to my eye, and watching that video on my homepage made me cry and cry!
One thing that was not mentioned that I feel is extremely hard to overlook is how his “legacy” is being carried on. Simplicity is sophistication right? Well, changing the plugs on the new iphone 5 is vastly far from simplicity. It’s complicated, messy, many new devices need to be made, things are not interchangeable. This was everything Steve Jobs did not want. I feel like a plug change is a huge money grab and to be honest I fear for the future of this company that Steve Jobs really did make incredible.
Beautiful writing! While I may not agree with everything Apple does, Steve Jobs was a incredible man and leader and I was devastated when I read of his death. Still one of the most amazing things to me is that I read about his death on a device that he practically invented, as did millions of other people.