Leaving A Legacy

As I was working on some wedding edits tonight, I skipped over to twitter to check things out. The most recent update was one that said "RIP Steve Jobs." I went over to the MSN homepage to look for a Breaking News banner, and at this point, it wasn't even up there yet - it was that soon after the announcement. I went back to my twitter feed and in a matter of minutes, the entire feed was flooded with tweets about Steve, his life, work, passion, and company. His legacy. It's now been maybe an hour since the news broke and 99% of my twitter feed is still dominated by him and news of his passing. People commenting on how the world will never be the same.

One tweet had a link to this video. It is a graduation speech that Steve gave at Stanford in 2005. I watched all 15 minutes of his video and sat transfixed, as his words washed over me. There is such wisdom and such power behind his words. Such truth. From one amazing man.

In my own small corner of the web, my twitter and facebook feeds are full of Steve Jobs posts. I can confidently assume it's the same all over the entire world wide web right now. One man has made that big of an impact on our world as it is today, that the entire internet is buzzing about his passing and the legacy left behind.

I can barely wrap my head around what an impact he made in all of our lives. He revolutionized the technology that we use on a daily basis.

All the posts about Steve Jobs and his legacy shoved me into a hyper emotional state and got me thinking about my own legacy. My own life. My own passions, dreams, goals, work. What do I want my legacy to be? What would it be right now if this was my last day here?

I'm not naive enough to think that I'm the next Steve Jobs. Obviously anything is possible, but let's be real. I'm probably not going to change the way each of us approaches technology and revolutionize modern life. I won't have the entire world tweeting when I die. But my hope is that my life will leave a legacy of happiness, faith, strength and hope for those who I knew and loved. I hope that when I die, people can look back at my life and say that I lived each and every day to the fullest, and went after my dreams.

We only get this one life, I want to live it big.

Steve Jobs' passing follows the sudden deaths of a 19 year old boy from our town, and the young sister of one of my college classmates. These have all served as a reminder to me and to countless others that life is short. Way too short usually. Let's live it to the fullest with open arms, lots of love, and even more prayers.

RIP Steve, Aaron, and Shayla. Many prayers for those left behind who loved you.