Steve Jobs: Secrets of Life

There is a kind of subtle depression that comes from assuming you are just going to live in a routine dictated by others. Recently I've gotten into a big programming project.

Programming is somewhere I've always felt at home. Perhaps, cause I've done it from a very early age.

Maybe math was a childhood fling, and programming a life-long committed relationship.

Where I feel comfortable experimenting, playing with the parts, and seeing what happens.

And it helps me take it as an analogy.

Everything - the plumbing in my house, social structures, financial structures we live in,

are just a sum of parts that were made by people, and an interface that interacts with you

that was made by people.

They are not solid black boxes put there by god, where every detail is perfected.

I feel it can time for some people  30-40 years
to be able to treat women like human beings.
Before that every time you think `treat her like a human being'
you just shift from thinking of her as a sex object,
to thinking of her as a perfect delicate angel.

Finally, you start to be able to think of her as
a person with preferences, self-interests, desires.

You start to try to understand what makes her tick? What does she want?
Before that, you wouldn't do that, because both as a sex object and as a perfect angel,
there's nothing she wants in your mind.

But I guess it's just a special case of viewing people as one dimension - 100% greedy or 100% kind, ect.

One time ago,
these were all just sounds to me.
They didn't mean anything.
They didn't hold back the sounds behind them.
They had their time.
She said we had our time, together.
I feel it's still our time, For-
ever, we'll play the same guitar.
The strings will become rusty,
but not our love.
This sound..never dies.

Two movements of thought.

One, encouraged very much by movies, media, that you can spend the young part of your life in

is that your real life hasn't started yet. Everything is going wrong, but there's no point or need to do something about it, because it's just a sort of nightmare, and you will wake up from it at some point into your perfect life.

But years pass.. you're 30, 33, 34, 35, almost 36.

and you see the world, this life, is not going anywhere.

You see also, that although there is a lot of shit in it, it's not random, not arbitrary.

There are patterns. You behave in certain ways, and you get certain types of results.

and the patterns are hard to see, because your emotions only see this moment,

but the patters of cause and effect, in life quality, in relationships with people,

span over a longer period - from a day to years.

Finally you say.. OK, given that is my life situation, that I am not going to suddenly wake up from it,

how can I make the best of it.

Suddenly, you find a lot of satisfaction in small improvements..

like OK - when I was 18 I spent the whole year watching TV, jerking off, and perhaps not having one friend or date.

Now at 35, I only spend 20/30% of the time doing that, and I have 3 girls that don't run away when I start talking to them.

At this rate, things will be awesome by the time I'm 85.