Connecting the Dots of Our Lives
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Recently, I was listening to a commencement speech given by Steve Jobs at Stanford University in 2005. He spoke about “connecting the dots” of our lives. He talked about his dropping out of college, and then dropping in a calligraphy class on campus, which had not even a hope of any practical application in his life.
But ten years later, he said, when they were designing the first Macintosh, the insights from that calligraphy class all came back to him, which gave the Mac its beautiful typography. He summed up the lessons he drew from that experience saying, “you cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards”.
Listening to that story told by Steve Jobs, I couldn’t help but think about St. Paul’s “all things are working together for the good to those who have love for God” (Romans 8:28), and the “even the sins” quote that St. Augustine added to St. Paul’s saying.
Steve Jobs sort of helped me to better understand St. Paul and St. Augustine, and it occurred to me that, by coincidence, the three of them were speaking to a deep truth of life, which Jobs labeled as ‘connecting the dots’ and which he framed in the following words for his young audience that day: “So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Because believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.”
In our faith, let’s follow our heart and trust that our life’s dots will necessary connect in our future.
Paul Baker
Posted at 06:50h, 31 JanuaryA interesting and insightful read. Thanks.
Karen Arthurs
Posted at 09:59h, 01 FebruaryThis is a good reminder of how our faith may be strengthened in our modern world, while still leaning on those early prophets.