At the time Steve Jobs had been giving his commencement speech at Stanford University he was at the middle adulthood stage of the life development cycle. This stage begins at the age of 40 years and usually ends age at the age of 65. At the time Steve jobs had been giving this speech he had been 50 years old. At this stage, the major areas of conflict are generality versus stagnation.
This stage is generally characterized by the fact that people want the best in their lives. This can be done by getting children and making other positive changes in their lives. At this stage, a successful person will feel accomplished and a failure will feel bad about all the wasted opportunities that he or she has had in their lifetime. This will result to the individual not associating with other people and keeping to themselves.
The speech that Steve Jobs gives is not entirely consistent with the stage of life he falls in. Steve jobs talks about some of the events in his life that have helped him in life. He looks back and marvels at the accomplishments and some of the failures in his life.
This is consistent with the lifespan development stage which he falls into. However, Steve Jobs talks about death in length. He talks about how he was close to his death before a surgery saved his life. This is falls in the late adulthood stage which normally occurs from the age of 65.
Steve Jobs in his speech talks about some the events that have helped him develop over the years. He tells three stories. The first one is about joining the dots. In this story, he recalls of how his real and adopted parents wanted him to go to college. However, when he finally got there he dropped out since he did not see the use of spending all of his parent’s savings in college.
He dropped out and was now able to attend the classes that he really liked. He recalls how he attended a topography class at some point after he had dropped off college. He learnt a lot from this topography class but did not really know where he would apply some of the things he had learnt in his personal life.
He was now able to connect the dots. This is because after some years while designing an operating system he was able to apply what he had learnt in that topography class years ago. He concludes that human beings can only connect the dots looking forward and not backwards.
The second story was about love and lust. In this story, he recalls how he together with a friend had founded Apple. However, after some years he was fired from Apple, a company that he had co-founded.
This did not stop him from doing what he liked most and went on form two other successful companies. One of companies was bought by Apple and as a result he returned to Apple. It was at this time that he went on to find the love of his life.
In the third story, he talks about death. He recalls how thinking about death had been helping him make important decisions in life. He also recalls of how he had been diagnosed with cancer. Initially, the doctor had told him that he would only live for a few months as the cancer he had been suffering from was incurable.
However, after going through some scans days later, the doctors determined that the type of cancer he had been diagnosed with was treatable through surgery. He went through the surgery and at the time he was giving his speech he hoped to live a decade longer. He highlights the importance of death and how it changed his life.
References
Austrian, S. G. (2008). Developmental theories through the life cycle (2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Neukrug, E. (2012). The World of the counselor: an introduction to the counseling profession (4th ed.). Australia: Brooks/Cole.