”Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”
Steve Jobs gave quite a lot of food for thoughts with one of his famous quotes, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”. At the face of it, it may sound like a couple of words clubbed together to make sense. But if you dig deeper, you will see there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Only when we delve more into it, will we understand the real implications.
So what exactly did he mean by ‘staying hungry and staying foolish’?
It can mean a lot of things depending on how you perceive it. For some, it can mean having an insatiable hunger for consistently achieving big. For others, it could mean the hunger to keep learning and keep dreaming. Let’s examine the quote and see what we all it can imply.
Stay hungry, for what?
Hunger is the metaphor for being driven. If you aren’t hungry, why would you go hunting in the woods? I know nobody these days goes hunting, but, you get the idea. Hunger is the metaphor symbolizing the motivation, the need behind the cause. It’s the unfulfilled desire that is waiting to be fulfilled. If you aren’t hungry enough, you will never find the motivation to do anything in life.
The desire for betterment is what kept the innovation going from the building of the first wheel, to the discovery of fire, to everything that we see around us today. If the human race had ceased to desire for more, none of those discoveries and inventions would have been possible.
Never be satisfied with your present version; with where you are right now. Always keep the need for betterment alive. Never allow the learning in the life to come to a halt. That’s what this quote inspires us to do!
On the second thought it can also mean being hungry for answers. Asking questions, being curious. Trust me when I say this, a lot of people do/try a lot of new things, just for the sake of curiosity. Do keep the hunger for curiosity alive. Don’t let your life come to a standstill, because that’s what happens when you stop desiring. But desire for what?
Well, that’s a question which you would have to answer yourself. As they say, “To each their own!”
Staying foolish, for what?
“The fool didn’t know it was impossible, so he did it.” The quote is one of my personal favorites.
It says so much about how we are confined by our own mind. We have set our own limitations which we fail to come out of because of thinking too logically.
Being foolish again can imply a lot of things. It can mean to keep that logical thinking aside for a few moments, and to believe that sky is actually the limit. That you can actually reach for the stars. We are so accustomed to thinking too technically that we fail to look past it. If only we looked beyond the convention, can we really see endless possibilities for ourselves.
After all, being different isn’t easy. It takes guts to stand out of the herd and dare to do something which, for all we know, most people are only going to laugh at. But it’s this kind of thinking that has made the impossible possible through the ages.
Being foolish can also mean to be absolutely different from others. Just going with what your gut says irrespective of what everyone else around you is saying. To be extraordinary. To not settle for mediocrity; even if it means doing something completely crazy.
Like Jobs said, “You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards”.
A fool is easily convinced that somehow everything will make sense in the future. That makes it easier to live in the present and not complait about why happened whatever happened.
So, think on it and move your life forward!!! As Steve Jobs said,” Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
