Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple Inc. Here is an extract from a commencement speech he made back on 2005.

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. [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. YES!

What ever Edera might say about my special qualities I have to point out that it was pure luck and a measure of inattention on my part which had us sitting in the Tower Ballroom Blackpool yesterday afternoon. I’d always wanted to see it live having watch Come Dancing on TV back in the 1960’s. O the glamour, the thousands of sequins. The frothy frocks. At that time it all seemed like a million miles away from where I sat. I’d not have contemplated wearing anything like what I saw, nor would I have danced ballroom either. I was far too shy for that sort of thing. Yesterday there was quite a show of fancy frocks as it happened. A BBC film crew were in house making a documentary about how people entertained themselves between the wars. Melvin Bragg, no less, was doing on-camera interviews while the lovely couples danced away in the background. Ah, a touch of fairyland amidst all that we have been dealing with.

Days have been full, night turns into morning, as now. Soon Edera will be winging her way back to Japan. Sad. Our mission these past weeks has, among many other things, been to walk boxes of stuff to the ground floor of the house. And then out of the front door and into the car! Iain’s belongs will not be lonely. The charity shops are happy to receive donations.

After Goso died, my ordination sister mentioned earlier, all of her belongings were brought to the monks common room. We all had the opportunity to adopt her things, I particularly remember the pair of bright orange gaiters I used for years afterwards. Always remembering her as I tied them on. She had walked with them in McKinley National Park, as it was called then. Rev. Master said at the time that a persons belongings shouldn’t be lonely.