On the importance of getting old

Wired published an article about the history behind Steve Jobs' legendary commencement speech. The article itself wasn't what I thought it would be. Given my previous blog post I had assumed that it was going to be how the speech evolved from nothing much to something big and that it would hold parallels to the idea of not being afraid of getting started even if the first attempt stinks. But it wasn't. It's a simple telling of the people and the timelines involved in making a speech that at the time at least, didn't seem like it would hold the impact that it does today. So, while it's nice, I found that I was less interested in the article itself than in just listening to the commencement speech.

And while there were many wonderful lines in the speech, This line in particular, struck me in a way that I haven't felt before:

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’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

This hit so hard that I just stopped the video to think about it. To reflect pretty deeply on what it means. Maybe it's because I'm older and I'm a father of a 9 year old who is very clearly showing me that the future will soon belong to someone else. Maybe that's why it hit so hard.

But I also think it hits because I look around the world and I see old craven people clawing to keep their piece of the pie when really, they should be preserving it as best as they can to gift to the next generation. Old people who keep running counties and countries with a stubborn determination to ensure life is as hard for the next generation as possible. Old people who will work harder to make themselves live longer than they will to help the young live better. I feel like as much as they will heap praise on the vision of Steve Jobs, they hold a profound disrespect for life in the way Jobs would have thought of it.

They all need to go back to the transcript and read the entire section about death. Take it. Frame it. Hang it up where they'll see it each time as they bring in their personal chefs, trainers, accountants, or any fellow conspirators. And then supplement it with the first 90 seconds of this incredible scene from the "The Crown" where Princess Alice talks about realizing that after the age of 70 she was no longer a participant but rather a spectator.

More old people could do with this attitude to be honest.

And so, I type and re-type and re-type again these final words. Just as I spent minutes pondering on the words from that commencement speech. I find myself lost, trying to imagine what it means to actually live up to the spirit of those words. If you were to unselfishly treat your life as going into spectator mode by the age 70, I wonder how much that would change of your younger years. I don't know. It's a tough one for sure. Something I'm going to be thinking about for a long long time to come.

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Posted on June 21 2025 by Adnan Issadeen