Dinging

My family has been an Apple family for as long as I can remember. Our first Mac was a Performa 575. My dad bought it at Sam’s Club on a Wednesday afternoon, then when he got home, it was time to go to church. When we got back, my mom had set it all up and was playing Solitaire on it. Dad looked like someone had stolen his brand new puppy out from under the Christmas tree. Through the years, we upgraded as we could afford it, generally around tax refund time. We played Carmen San Diego, KidPix, Wacky Jacks, a wicked pinball game called Loony Labyrinth, and of course, Tetris. Back in the 90’s, Windows was definitely where it was at. We would groan whenever we found a game we particularly wanted, only to find out it was PC only. Ohh, how we would rage at the manufacturers... didn’t they know that Apples were way better? We snickered maliciously when we heard tales of computers “freezing up” and “crashing”, of multiple trips to repair shops.

At the age of 14, I started doing volunteer work at my church, which used all PCs. I felt outraged every time I had to close a window on the right hand side. What was with these people? When Jeremy and I got married and I moved out, I went 6 long years with cast-off PCs. For our 6th anniversary, Jeremy bought me a MacBook Pro. I felt like I had returned to my native heath. HERE I knew what I was doing. HERE were style and class. HERE was home.

When my family saw the news that Steve Jobs had passed away, there was a flurry of text messaging going on. My brother Ben called me from work to talk about it. We felt grieved, like we had lost a family member, an institution in our history. Maybe we overreacted, being total strangers... but it felt like the world paused and hung its head for a moment.

I talked to my brother Adam a little bit about it today. We were trying to pinpoint what the difference was, why we were so sad and felt so personally affected. This is the gist of what we ended up deciding: In general, Mac users are a different breed than PC users. And most of us are fiercely loyal because we’ve had to fight harder against the “mainstream”. A lot of us, my family included,  used Apples before they were popular or even convenient, and we’re proud of that. You feel an immediate kinship when you spot a fellow Apple user in a bookstore or coffee shop. To me, and probably more than just me, Steve Jobs and Apple represent real American spirit and creativity, and show us just what the underdog can accomplish.

So here’s where I’m going with all this- no, I did not intend to make it a shameless Mac plug, it just evolved into that- Steve Jobs once said:


“I want to put a ding in the universe.”


Boy, did he ever. A baby given up at birth, a college drop out, shouldered out of the company he helped create, only to return and reinvent it... Look at the ding he made. All because of a vision. A passion. He inspired new ideas, forged a new path, rewrote history and changed life as we know it. He didn’t let obstacles stop him, he let them make him stronger.


“Your time on this earth is limited. Don’t live someone else’s life, live by your vision.”


So. What are my visions? What are my passions? Where is my ding? What type of ding can I make on my world? And what type of ding can YOU make on yours?




For more of Steve's quotes, visit this website. I was inspired by quite a few.