THE ANALYSIS OF METAPHOR IN STEVE JOBS’S “STAY HUNGRY, STAY

FOOLISH” SPEECH IN STANFORD UNIVERSITY

A. Background

Language is a means of communication. Human uses language to convey their

intention and feelings every day. Human’s language can generally be divided into two
forms, they are spoken and written language. Spoken language usually can be seen in a
number of public events, such as school festival announcement, government policy,
speeches of the public figures, and so forth. Spoken language is often used to give
information about something new or to persuade someone to do something. On the other
hand, written language is mostly found in certain media, for example, magazines,
newspaper, school textbooks and many more. It is usually used to give new information
likes products, services, and entertainments. Language is the way human transfers their
ideas.

There are many beliefs that language can only be understood in literal meaning. It
is one of the most interesting problem. For example, in our daily life, when a mother says,
”You are my everything.” to her daughter or son, and she really does everything to fulfill
her child’s needs and wants. This is common thing to be heard. It is unclear, however, a
mother conveys those words to her child only in family context, which mean it is easy to
be understood by the family member. Take a look at another example, in certain
conversation, a mother tells this expression to her friend, “My husband is the tree of my
life.” This expression could be confusing for the hearer because she does not understand
the context. Friend of the mother would interpret the utterance in literal meaning. The
mother could be seen as a liar, because those words do not say what it really means.

A motivator in a public event speaks about happiness and he says, “Happiness is a

problem.” It did not mean to tell that happiness is not a good thing to be obtained in our
daily life, because everyone is sure that he or she wants to be happy. Those expression
that have been mentioned above cannot be understood literally. These instances are called
Metaphor in literary study. And there are many examples of metaphorical expression that
can be found in real life communications. Human thought processes are largely
metaphorical (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003:7).

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 One of the most interesting topic in language study is the use of metaphor in
public speaking. Metaphor is artful ways of speaking to make a comparison. With
metaphor you can paint pictures in the minds of your audience members. It make more
engaging and compelling ways of describing something, which means your audience
more likely to pay attention to what you have to say. Additionally, you have the chance to
make bold stylistic choices in your speech through the construction of creative metaphors
(https://lumen.instructure.com/courses/218897/pages/linkedtext54260 retrieved on 27
June 2019 at 03.45 PM ).

Public speaking, as it is labeled, is usually found in public places. It is often done

to reach several purposes: persuading the audience to do something, motivating the
listener about certain vision, giving information about innovations or something new,
conducting political campaign in order to obtain many followers. These aims are only a
little of many targets that needs to be reached. In public speaking, language takes
important roles, because it needs to be well-prepared. One that is interesting is the public
speaking that is conducted by public figure, such as CEO of companies, actress and
actors, governments, and etc. They often convey certain “magic words” in order to be
able to make the listeners amaze of their speeches and be willing to do what they want.
The audiences are also inspired by them.

This paper analyzes the discourse in public speaking, that is, Metaphor in the
speech of Apple Company founder, namely Steve Jobs. His speech has changed people’s
way of thinking. The speech was done at graduation day in Stanford University in 2005,
as a closing of the ceremony. He is known as the best story teller in the world because of
his speech and the way he promotes his products in his company. For these reasons, it is
interesting to understand how he inspire and motivate the listeners and understand the
uniqueness of his speeches.

The subsequent chapter will discuss about the theories in relation to metaphor
according to a number of experts and some other related literature, it also talks about the
concept of metaphor from Lakoff and Johnson and another relevant findings. The third
chapter contains about the data which is analyzed in this paper. Chapter four tells about
the writer’s conclusion. And the last chapter is the literature that cited as references and
appendix.

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B. Theories

- Metaphor

Metaphor is very important thing to be learned in language study. It helps us to

understand a language in relation to something figurative and cultural. Metaphor can be
used to analyze a discourse in certain way. According to Oxford Learners’ Dictionary,
metaphor can be defined as a word or phrase used to describe somebody/something else,
in a way that is different from its normal use, in order to show that the two things have the
same qualities and to make the description more powerful, for example She has a heart of
stone; the use of such words and phrases. Aristotle (in David Punter, 2007:12) further
defines metaphor as ‘giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the
tranference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species
to species, or on grounds of analogy’.

David Punter (2007:26-27) states that within the Western tradition, the term
metaphor itself is seen to identify a verbal process whereby two discrete objects or ideas
become linked, but in a very particular way, such that, for the duration of the metaphor,
one of the items actually becomes the other, and vice versa: if we say, ‘James is a beast’,
we are not merely inviting our listener to adjudicate on exactly what way James displays
any one or more of a range of beast-like qualities; rather, we are inviting the listener to
identify James with a beast.

Metaphor is often compared with simile. Nowadays, people usually confused the
difference between metaphor and simile. David Punter (2007:27) states A simile, as we
have seen, proposes a looser form of association. If we say, ‘James behaves like a
spaniel’, we are inviting the listener to consider the way or ways in which James
resembles a spaniel and, perhaps, even to adjudicate for him- or herself as to whether the
comparison is apt. But similes depend, like all forms of metaphor, on a certain degree of
common ground. It is concluded that the difference between metaphor and simile is that,
metaphor states two things with “is” and “as”, however, simile uses “like” to compare
different ideas.

Metaphor states something as the same thing or equal with the other thing, but the
things are actually different (Altenbernd in Pradopo, 2009:66).

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 Metaphor has two terms, they are principal term and secondary term. Principal
term can also be referred as tenor. Secondary term can be mentioned as vehicle. Tenor is
identified as ‘something that is compared’, while vehicle is ‘a term to compare’. For
instance, ‘the earth is a mom’. ‘The Earth’ is tenor, then ‘a mom’ is vehicle (Pradopo,
2009:66).

- Conceptual Metaphor

The concept of metaphor from Lakoff and Johnson (2003) in Metaphors We Live By:

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical
flourish—a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is
typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought
or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without
metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life,
not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms
of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They
also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts
structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other
people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.
If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the
way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of
metaphor.

But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. In most of
the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically
along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out
is by looking at language. Since communication is based on the same conceptual system
that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what
that system is like.

Primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that most of our
ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. And we have found a way to begin
to identify in detail just what the metaphors are that structure how we perceive, how we
think, and what we do.

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 To give some idea of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for
such a concept to structure an everyday activity, let us start with the concept
ARGUMENT and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is
reflected in our everyday language by a wide variety of expressions:

ARGUMENT IS WAR

- Your claims are indefensible.

- He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target.
- I demolished his argument.
- I've never won an argument with him.
- You disagree? Okay, shoot!
- If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. He shot down all of my arguments.

It is important to see that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of war. We
can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an
opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We
plan and use strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a
new line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the
concept of war. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the
structure of an argument—attack, defense, counterattack, etc.—reflects this. It is in this
sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it
structures the actions we perform in arguing.
Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson (2003) states that the essence of metaphor is
understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. It is not that
arguments are a subspecies of war. Arguments and wars are different kinds of things—
verbal discourse and armed conflict—and the actions performed are different kinds of
actions. But ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed, and talked
about in terms of WAR. The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is
metaphorically structured, and, consequently, the language is metaphorically structured.

Another metaphorical concept that can be found in daily life is that TIME IS MONEY.
There are many expressions in relation to this concept. They are as follows:
- You're wasting my time.
- This gadget will save you hours.

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- I don't have the time to give you.
- How do you spend your time these days? That flat tire cost me an hour.
- I've invested a lot of time in her.
- I don't have enough time to spare for that. You're running out of time.
- You need to budget your time.
- Put aside some time for ping pong. Is that worth your while?
- Do you have much time left?
- He's living on borrowed time.
- You don't use your time profitably. I lost a lot of time when I got sick. Thank you for
your time.
These expressions show that in human life, time is valuable commodity. It is a
limited resource. It can be wasted. These are reasons why at work, people are paid hours,
weeks, months, and even years. The way we conceive, the way we think, and we act
through this concept is metaphorical in nature. TIME IS MONEY is coherent with TIME
IS VALUABLE COMMODITY. It also coherent with TIME IS A LIMITED
RESOURCE. All the instances here is metaphorical concept.

- Relevant Findings

1. The Use of Metaphor in Obama’s Inauguration Speech, a paper by Faizal Risdianto

Faizal’s study is aimed to elaborate the uniqueness of Barrack Obama’s Inaugural

speech when he has been sworn in as the 44th US President on 20th Januari 2009. This
research is a (qualitative) bibliographical study. The object of the study is the use of
metaphor in Barrack Obama’s speech. There are 23 sentences chosen to represent all the
metaphorical sentences of Obama’s speech being the object of the study. Having
analyzed the data by the perspective of George Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual
metaphor, the researcher can draw a conclusion that Obama has effectively and creatively
used metaphorical expressions in convincing his people about his future plans. His
remarkable speech discussing how to solve the great scale of the economic mess that now
confronts the US and the common feeling of the loss of national self-confidence.

These problems not so many people are seriously questioning. He has used the
domain of “Movement” in explaining “Change”, the domain of “Location” over “States”,
the domain of “Motion Over a Landscape” used to elaborate “States”, the domain of

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“War/Fight” had been used to describe “Politics”, the domain of “Transfer” in explaining
“Actions”, the domain of “Journey” in describing “Politics” and the domain of
“Agriculture” had been used in describing “Achieving a Purpose”.

Finally, the researcher suggests that there are many opportunities and facets to
make a lingual research about this study particularly a research on the metaphorical
expression of world’s famous speech like Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. This
work requires deeper and broader observation, interpretation and analysis. The study
towards this most outstanding figurative language offers deeper interpretation about the
linguistic unique feature of formal speech. This suggestion is aimed to all language
researcher and the students of English department , particularly the program of English
linguistics.

2. Metafora Dalam Pidato Charles De Gaulle Pada Perang Dunia II, a thesis by Bintarti
Mayang Sari

The title of the second relevant finding is Metafora Dalam Pidato Charles De Gaulle
Pada Perang Dunia II by Bintarti Mayang Sari. This thesis analyzes metaphor that is
found in Charles De Gaulle’s speech on 11st November 1941. In analyzing metaphor
which is found in the speech, the writer used the theory that proposed by Lakoff and
Johnson. It is found that the metaphor used in Charles De Gaulle’s speech was mostly
metaphor from concrete to abstract. The use of those metaphor is to express De Gaulle’s
feeling appropriately and to influence the listeners. This analysis also shows De Gaulle’s
point of view as an individual and the leader of nation, those are never giving up and
nationalism that can be followed by the people to empower the country.

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C. Data

The data for this paper is taken from Steve Jobs’s speech at the graduation day in
Stanford University in 2005. The full script of the speech was written in singjupost.com
and it was obtained on 30 June 2019.

Steve Job’s speech is categorized as written text. In other way, it can also be identified as
written language. Nowadays, people often confused with spoken and written text. Here
are the differences between them:

Spoken texts Written texts

Essentially dialogic in nature Essentially monologic in nature

Typically created by two or more people Typically created by one person
Usually interactants share knowledge of the Writer typically removed from the audience
context in which the language is being used
Generally spontaneously created Generally drafted and edited
Generally accompany action Generally reflect an action
Dependent on immediate context for Independent of context
meaning
Intricate interrelationship between clauses
Relatively straightforward relationship
between clauses
Fewer content words and more More content words and fewer grammatical
grammatical words words
The interpersonal aspects of language are The topic of the discourse is typically
typically foregrounded foregrounded

There are a number of clear differences between spoken and written text. In analyzing a
discourse, a researcher could find the data anywhere as long as it is relevant to the topic
that being focused on.

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Analysis

There are 3 metaphorical concepts with 9 sentences as proof in the speech. Each sentence
has its own uniqueness.

Metaphorcial Concepts

1. LIFE IS A CHANGE AGENT

2. DEATH IS A TOOL

3. TIME IS MONEY

These three metaphorical concepts and its sentence will be elaborated below:

LIFE IS A CHANGE AGENT

Life here is tenor. A change agent is vehicle. A change agent here is used to compare with
life which totally means that life functions as reminder and controller for human. There
are two expressions for this metaphorical concept as in the following explanation:

(1) The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything.

This sentence starts with the heaviness of being successful. Heaviness here is derived
from heavy which also means hard, difficult, and severe. For the life of Steve Jobs, it
means hard to be a successful man and he was fired from his job. So, he says, the
lightness of being a beginner. Lightness has several meaning, they are (1) glow, (2) light
in weight, (3) easy, (4) less of loud. Being a beginner again, for Steve Jobs, is easy and
free, he started life from zero. There is a change in his life.

(2) Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick

Life here is an abstract concept. It is going to hit Jobs in the head with a brick. The
expression above personified life as an agent (entity) that functions as a reminder for
Jobs.

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DEATH IS A TOOL

(1) I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but
purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die

Death here is tenor. It is concrete concept that can be seen as a human body without soul.
A useful but purely intellectual concept is vehicle. Useful here means help, make easier,
and facilitate. Death is drawn as intellectual concept that can help human life become
easier.

(2) Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent

This expressions sees Death as something new for everyone. It is found by ‘scientist’ or
researcher. It is an agent that takes everyone to feel the change of life.

(3) And yet death is the destination we all share

This utterance means that Death can also be used as the ‘final place’ to be visited by all
human being. As everyone knows that someone will die soon.

(4) Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered
to help me make the big choices in life

Dead has a role to remind human beings that soon they will die. So, they have to make
big choices because they do not know when they are going to back to the God. Having
awareness about dead, someone will make the best choices everyday for the rest of his or
her life.

(5) Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of
thinking you have something to lose

When we were born to this world, we have nothing. It also happens when we die, we are
naked. That is why die is seen as the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you have
something to lose. When we realize abou this, we are not afraid to give something to
someone even if it has value for us.

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TIME IS MONEY

(1) Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life

Time here is seen as valuable commodity. It can also be seen as a limited resources. So
Jobs says, ‘Your time is limited’ here to remind the audiences about dont waste it living
someone else’s life, because someone have to start from the beginning and pretending to
do something different. It is wasting time.

(2) But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my
working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my 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.

When Jobs entered college, after six months, he couldn’t see the value in it. It means he
felt it was wasting time. In his conceptual system, he sees time as a limited resource.

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D. Conclusion

1. The essence of metaphor here is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of
another. Aristotle (in David Punter, 2007:12) further defines metaphor as ‘giving the
thing a name that belongs to something else; the tranference being either from genus
to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of
analogy’. Our conceptual system whether we are aware about it or not is metaphorical
in nature.
2. Metaphor has two terms, they are principal term and secondary term. Principal term
can also be referred as tenor. Secondary term can be mentioned as vehicle. Tenor is
identified as ‘something that is compared’, while vehicle is ‘a term to compare’. For
instance, ‘the earth is a mom’. ‘The Earth’ is tenor, then ‘a mom’ is vehicle (Pradopo,
2009:66).
3. To sum up, Steve Jobs in his speech ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” The metaphorical
concept and expression is dominated from the abstract to concrete concepts: LIFE IS
A CHANGE AGENT. DEATH IS A TOOL. And the last one is TIME IS MONEY.

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 REFERENCES

https://lumen.instructure.com/courses/218897/pages/linkedtext54260 retrieved on 27 June

2019 at 03.45 PM

https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-steve-jobs-stay-hungry-stay-foolish-speech-at-
stanford-2005/3/ retrieved on 30 June 2019 at 12.15 PM

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/2-Main-differences-between-spoken-and-written-
texts_tbl2_234662324 retrieved on 30 June 2019 at 08.40 PM

Punter, David. 2007. Metaphor. London and New York: Routledge

Pradopo, Rachmat Djoko. 2009. Pengkajian Puisi. Yogyakarta: Universitas Gajah Mada.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 2003. Metaphors We Live By. USA: The University of
Chicago.

Risdianto, Faizal. The Use of Metaphor in Obama’s Inauguration Speech. STAIN

Salatiga

Sari, Bintarti Mayang. 2012. Metafora Dalam Pidato Charles De Gaulle Pada Perang
Dunia II. Depok: Universitas Indonesia.

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 APPENDIX

Thank you.

I am 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.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6
months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.

So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and
she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by
college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his
wife.

Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking:
“We’ve got an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?”

They said: “Of course.”

My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and
that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption
papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to
college.

This was the start in my life.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as
expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my
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 of 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.

14
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I
returned coke bottles for the $0.05 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 that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy
instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every 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 san serif typefaces, about
varying the amount of 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 have never had
multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac,
it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this 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 backwards 10 years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking
backwards.

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 that 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.

LOVE & LOSS

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in
life.

Woz and I started Apple in 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 into a $2 billion company with

15
over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year
earlier, and I had just turned 30.

And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you started?

Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company
with me, and for the first year or so things went well.

But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When
we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.

So at 30, I was out. And very publicly out.

What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation
of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.

I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I
was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.

But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did.

The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in
love. And 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 beginner again,
less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next 5 years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named 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, I returned to Apple, and the technology
we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current 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. It was
awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. 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 as 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.

16
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 just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep
looking. Don’t settle.

DEATH
My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was
your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me.

And since then, 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 I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help
me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all
pride, all fear of embarrassment 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 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.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it
clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The
doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should
expect to live no longer than three to six months.

My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for
prepare to die. It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next
10 years to tell them in just a few months.

It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your
family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an
endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my
pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told
me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it
turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.

I had the surgery and thankfully I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more
decades.

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Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death
was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die.

Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the
destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because
Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out
the old to make way for the new.

Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become
the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

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 own inner voice. And most important,
have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you
truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog,
which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart
Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This
was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made
with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback
form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and
great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and
then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was
your age.

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the
kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the
words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

And I have always wished that for myself.

And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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