Yesterday, upon hearing the sad news of Steve Jobs death, I went looking for this video as his commencement speech at Stamford is one of my favorites. There were a little over 6 million hits on this video. Less then 24 hours later, the number of people accessing this video has surpassed 7.5 million which speaks volumes to the impact of his life, his endeavors and inspiring career upon all of us.
My favorite part of this video is when Steve talks about being adopted and the promise his parents made to his biological parents to make sure he went to college. I love the fact that he didn't let his formal education interfere with his love and passion for knowledge and creativity.
Like Steve, there are a few of us adopted kids roaming this planet..wreaking havoc on those "reallies" (our term for children who remain with their biological parents - the ones who are "really" biologically related). A few years ago, I was working on a crisis team when one of my colleagues (a licensed, independent clinical social worker) learned there was a patient waiting for her (for an assessment) who was adopted. As she gathered her clipboard with her assessment form to go meet the patient and their family, she said "Adopted and foster kids are so screwed up that there's not a lot you can do to help them".
At once I was torn between wanting to throw up and wanting to slug her; I was beyond apoplectic.
I know (sadly, she didn't) that there are a lot of great people in this world who are (or were) adopted: Eleanor Roosevelt, John Lennon, the poet - Langston ("What happens to a dream deffered..") Hughes, Larry Ellison, Sharon Stone, Stephen Spielberg, Leo Tolstoy, Presidents Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford, Olympic athletes - Greg Louganis, Kitty and Peter Carruthers and Scott Hamilton and musicians Sarah McLachlan, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw just to name a few.
Yesireebob there are a lot of us walking this planet challenged with the ginormous task of having to teach our adoptive parents to look like us.
After his gold medal win in the winter olympics in 1988, a Sports Illustrated reporter interviewed Scotty Hamilton and asked him about the challenges of being adopted and not knowing your biological parents and how this may or may not have affected his motivation to "go for gold". His response was that he recognized the importance of being your own person as you may never know where you come from, so you create a path of your own - you create your own legacy. For him it was part of that drive in creating his own legacy that fostered his motivation to achieve and help others.
Steve Jobs did a masterful job of this - creating a legacy that has inspired and fueled generations of individuals, corporations, schools and teams to go far beyond what they may have realized because of the products that he (and his team at Apple) created.
..."and it's the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - who actually do."
