Steve Jobs on having kids: ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’
In his final weeks Steve Jobs spent much of his time with his wife and children — who will now oversee a fortune of at least $6.5 billion.
“Steve made choices,” his close friend Dr.Dean Ornish told the New York Times . “I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’
“For Steve, it was all about living life on his own terms and not wasting a moment with things he didn’t think were important. He was aware that his time on earth was limited. He wanted control of what he did with the choices that were left.”
His biographer, Walter Isaacson, whose book Steve Jobs will be published in two weeks, asked him why so private a man had consented to the questions of someone writing a book.
“I wanted my kids to know me,” Mr. Jobs replied, Mr. Isaacson wrote in an essay on Time.com. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
Because of that privacy, little is known yet of what Mr. Jobs’s heirs will do with his wealth.
His shares in Disney, which Mr. Jobs received when they bought his animated film company, Pixar, are worth about $4.4 billion - surprisingly, double the $2.1 billion value of his shares in Apple.
Mr. Jobs himself never got a university degree. However, giving the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford he told his audience that “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”
He made the speech after being told he had cancer but before it was clear that it would ultimately claim his life, said the Times.
The benefit of death, he said, is you know not to waste life living someone else’s choices.
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
Mona Simpson, Mr. Jobs’s sister, said, “Steve’s concerns these last few weeks were for people who depended on him: the people who worked for him at Apple and his four children and his wife.
“His tone was tenderly apologetic at the end. He felt terrible that he would have to leave us.”
As the seriousness of his illness became known, Mr. Jobs was asked to attend farewell dinners and to accept various awards.
He turned down the offers. On the days that he was well enough to go to Apple’s offices, the Times reported, all he wanted afterward was to return home and have dinner with his family.