I don't believe Jobs was like other tech leaders. He married humanities and technology during his tenures at Apple, and fought doggedly to ensure they never divorced. Jobs' immense empathy for humankind sometimes came at the expense of showing kindness to those closest to him. But behind his temperament, and reality distortion field, there was love from a prickly man, with an unceasing urge to deepen the dent he made in the universe.
Geniuses are complex people. They often ignore social norms, and sometimes extricate themselves from society, in order to create something that becomes the status quo. "Misunderstood," "challenging," and "asshole" are words sometimes attributed to these people. This book allows readers a glimpse into the life of a gifted person, while untangling some threads of one complicated man's life.
"I wished, desperately, that I could've been walking with him out the door of the hospital that evening. I wish we could've commiserated as we used to. I wish I could have told Jeff what I had come to understand about life, and our chosen way of life, if only to hear his wise, clever counsel. Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives are lived with passivity toward death—it's something that happens to you and those around you. But Jeff and I had trained for years to actively engage with death, to grapple with it, like Jacob with the angel, and, in so doing, to confront the meaning of a life. We had assumed an onerous yoke, that of mortal responsibility. Our patients' lives and identites may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect, the world isn't. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patient. You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving."
"Years ago, it had occured to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving. Describing life otherwise was like painting a tiger without stripes."