Steve Jobs' email to himself a year before his death reflects on how our life is dependent on others

No amount of success is worth its while if it is useless for society. Innovators who keep this in mind always leave their marks in history and one such world-renowned tech innovator is Steve Jobs. Apple's co-founder and former CEO has often made the headlines for his philosophical outlook in life. As it turns out, at times Jobs had to remind himself of his philosophical mindset. In 2010, a year before his death, the tech enthusiast sent an inspirational email to himself. Its content, shared under the "Put Something Back" thread by the Steve Jobs Archive, holds the inspiration that we all need to push our limits.

Dated September 3, 2010, this email was from Steve Jobs to Steve Jobs himself. With no particular subject, the email reads, "I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow, I did not breed or perfect the seeds." The email is mostly about the things that Jobs felt he was reliant on fellow human beings for sustenance. "I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine. I did not discover the mathematics I used," he wrote. The innovator emphasized that his life is run by things that other people had conceived and that he is not self-sustained.

"I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate and do not enforce or adjudicate. I am moved by music I did not create myself. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive," Jobs mentioned. In fact, he felt that his technological innovations were possible only because of the foundation laid by previous creators. "I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object-oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well-being," the email concluded. 

Having lived a life that many young people of today look up to, Jobs made sure to stick by his philosophical mindset. Turns out, this wasn't the first time that he had had these thoughts. During a 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen, Jobs spoke about how the clothes we wear, the languages we speak and the mathematics we use were developed by someone else. "We're constantly taking, and the ability to put something back into that pool of human experiences is extremely neat," he said. The archives also highlight Jobs' inspiring message during an internal meeting at Apple. "One of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there," Jobs pointed out.

Jobs often proved that his exceptional thoughts stemmed from his unshakable passion for life's philosophy in general. Even as a 26-year-old iconoclast, Jobs laid out an unexpected opinion about one of the "best signs of intelligence" during his speech at the Academy of Achievement in 1982, as per Inc Magazine. As per the tech innovator, it's not our good memory that makes us intelligent, but it's our "ability to zoom out." Asking people to make connections that are not obvious, Jobs explained, "So, what you got to do is get different experiences than the normal course of events."