"I hope you wear these uncommon circumstances as a badge of honor. Those who meet times of historical challenge with their eyes and hearts open — forever restless and forever striving — are also those who leave the greatest impact on the lives of others..."
Cook went on to describe how lucky he felt when he was hired to work at Apple in 1998 with Steve Jobs, as well as the heartbreak when Jobs died. "But fate comes like a thief in the night. The loneliness I felt when we lost Steve was proof that there is nothing more eternal, or more powerful, than the impact we have on others," Cook told the graduates...
"In every age, life has a frustrating way of reminding us that we are not the sole authors of our story. We must share credit, whether we'd like to or not, with a difficult and selfish collaborator called our circumstances. And when our glittering plans are scrambled, as they often will be, and our dearest hopes are dashed, as will sometimes happen, we're left with a choice. We can curse the loss of something that was never going to be... Or we can see reasons to be grateful for the yank on the scruff of the neck, in having our eyes lifted up from the story we were writing for ourselves and turned instead to a remade world."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.