"Steve Jobs 1955-2011", could be read on the Apple website on October 5, 2011. Until the end, this unique signature, minimalist, elegant and efficient. His signature. The noise created by the death of this American business leader took the world by surprise. A little, and the comparison has been made, as for Lady Diana a few years ago. Yet the comparison stops there, Lady Diana had ended up embodying the face of the oppressed in the face of a nomenclature; true or false, this portrait took more pleasure in a dream of a broken princess with evocative power but without any real connection to reality. The death of Steve Jobs is in no way the fate of the oppressed. The death of Steve Jobs is essentially about intimacy and therefore modesty. The death of Steve Jobs resounded with planetary noise. The life of Steve Jobs is an ode to intimacy.

What was Steve Jobs thinking the last days before his death? No doubt his mind was superimposing images of his childhood on other images of his childhood. When the time is given to die, thoughts come and go like waves on the beach. With the same sound, the same intensity, the same mastery, the same know-how. With the same intimacy as the sound of the waves is not the same for anyone. What thoughts of his childhood could Steve Jobs inhabit? At the end of August, when he resigned as CEO of Apple, anyone following the news of Apple and even, one might say, consumer computing guessed that things were going badly. Very bad. Because since 2004 and the announcement of his cancer, his state of health, even announced as being in remission on several occasions, showed no signs of recovery. Memories of childhood are endless and without order, said Chateaubriand. Does Steve Jobs, in his house, surrounded by his family, think of when his biological mother “offered” him to adoptive parents? Or does he imagine the face of his first adoptive parents? From those first furtive adoptive parents who refused the baby because they had changed their minds in the meantime and now wanted a girl. Steve Jobs was almost a lawyer's son, with perhaps a different life from the one he lived. Or Steve Jobs is trying to feel the joy his mother let herself feel when one morning she received this phone call informing her that a little boy was available and that she could have him if she wanted him. Perhaps Steve Jobs is retracing the paths of his childhood, those where one learns so often at his expense, those where life is a constraint from which one would like to remove the burden. What does childhood say if not failure? Or again: what does childhood say if not joy? How many opposites clash. How many opposites that annihilate each other. Childhood is yin and yang. Childhood is a path where extremes meet every second. In his home in Palo Alto, California, Steve Jobs lies on his deathbed. He feels that he no longer has the strength to get out of it. Much life has fled from his body which resembles a finely pierced mattress. People who have time to die are blessed by the gods. The pain is there, of course. But, basically, the suffering is nothing. Or rather, suffering is the irrefutable proof of life still present. What will we do when there is no more suffering? Steve Jobs, like anyone who is going to die and who knows of this imminent end, begs the suffering to settle in and endure. And why continue to live? Why struggle? For many months, he has known that it is over. Since 2004, and the announcement of his cancer, he has seen this guillotine that he had never imagined before and which is nevertheless so real, just above him, just above his neck, ready to fall, ready to finish this great movement, this exaltation, this madness, this joy, this perpetual reinvention, this perfection: life. Life is perfection, life is unique therefore life is authentic. Steve Jobs knows he hasn't fully solved the mystery of life. He knows that the passage of time does not give him more solutions. He knows he loves only one thing, it's this quest, this research, this path. It would do without all the solutions, all the answers, to walk this path again, this endless path which always expands without ever revealing itself. On his deathbed, in his house in Palo Alto, near San Francisco, not far from Apple, Steve Jobs thinks about his life and says to himself that he would have liked to live again, because he liked to live his life so much. (1). He thinks that this life has been his and that the intimacy he has forged with his life is his jewel.

Is the name of Steve Jobs complete when we say how he died? Of course not, death is a snapshot that can illuminate a life, absolve it, give it meaning, but death isn't everything. To think only in terms of death would amount to imitating those people who are so numerous these days who only see the living in life. Living forever is not life. To live forever is a delirium of scientists. The life of Steve Jobs is a stream transformed into a river. Métis (2), abandoned, refused, rejected, exposed as an impure and accidental child, the life of Steve Jobs began as a waking nightmare. And very quickly the first constraint: his final parents, those who finally accept to welcome him will be asked on condition that this boy goes to University. Good conscience of the student mother who wants a future for the child that she does not assume. We see the stream. A trickle of water. A rivulet. The life of Steve Jobs becomes that of many children of the American "middle class". We are in the 70s, America is discovering beatniks, the Vietnam War, LSD, artifacts of life. How no one told Steve Jobs about life, how no one can tell him, how he took his first steps in life, naked, without even parents to clothe him, without even affection or love that animals know how to show for their little ones, then Steve Jobs will build himself. It will build itself. An abandoned child is a superman. Steve Jobs will become a sponge of life. Life didn't want it, he's going to risk the overflow of life. No one dies from too much life. Steve Jobs had very early, in front of the abandonment and the refusals, the defense of the ill-treated children. Boris Cyrulnik has studied these phenomena under the name of resilience. When we named them, we didn't necessarily say their importance or their full significance. Steve Jobs begins to enter this life infinitely wider and deeper than the exogenous life: the inner life. "Larger than life" like to say the Americans. The expression is correct. Steve Jobs was abused, he will rebuild his intimacy. Intimacy, the relationship to oneself. The relation to the in-itself. It is on this unbreakable link that Steve Jobs will build his life. There is an explanation of the phenomenon of resilience. A fatherless man searches for his unknown father all his life. A man without love seeks love without recognizing it. Steve Jobs is animated by this spirit of life. It alternates resilience and remanence. It is often the result of a refined intelligence. He knows that his intimacy protects him, and he also knows that it is his strength. Steve Jobs attracted by the East and the hot meals of the Hare Krishna temples will discover a place which will be the crucible of the Steve Jobs that everyone has known: the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center (Tassajara Zen Mountain Center). Overlooking Carmel, in an idyllic setting, Steve Jobs will meet a man who will change his life: Kobun Chino Otogawa. In this Zen temple, perfectly handcrafted, Steve Jobs, in the lotus position or in seiza dachi, will soak up the place and bring the East closer to the West. For hours, he deconstructs and reconstructs his intimacy. The great mystics know it: from deconstruction is born a form of grace. The permanent search for deepening brings about grace. In Tassajara, Steve Jobs discovers craftsmanship, ethics, inner dialogue, Zen aesthetics, a father figure, a new intimacy. Who says better ? For a resilient subject like Steve Jobs, this is the crucible of what he will become. The event that changes the direction of his life.

From a violated childhood, we make a child with the feeling of being unique. Of course, every life is unique. But there is a difference between affirming it generally and living it. It's not about ego here. It's hard to say if Steve Jobs' mixed-race consciousness played a role in his life. The United States of America has no idea about mestizo. He does not name it. He blissfully ignores her. We are white or black. Steve Jobs was white with a Syrian father. Was Steve Jobs aware of his origins? Did he feel oriental blood running through his veins? And what difference did this exogenous blood supply make? Nothing and no one can tell. The nature of man is an unfathomable mystery and what is true for one is false for another. No two men are ever alike. And as the nature of man is unfathomable, the contribution of culture for each man is just as unfathomable and immeasurable. No effect will have the same cause. Neither cause the same effects. No chemistry is predictable. Steve Jobs, an abused child, rebuilds himself in the mountains overlooking Carmel alongside his "roshi" (master). It joins lines, small lines — “dots” as we say in English —, on which pedagogues stick the label of “life”. He left the University and took courses in typography as a free auditor. A few years later, Steve Jobs will dive into calligraphy at Tassajara. The calligraphy looks like a map of life. Steve Jobs starts writing his. Those who wrote his entry into life are forgotten, he writes his present. In Tassajara, Steve Jobs obeys the injunction to live his life. By rebuilding his intimacy. By reconnecting with himself, he discovers that his life is unique. And he discovers that he is an authentic being. It's not nothing ! How many children who are abused very early shout or get lost in an existential afterglow. It can be very difficult to live. The modern world keeps adding complications to the solutions. Steve Jobs, in Tassajara, finds the meaning of things. Buddhism had and still has this reach in the United States by the simplicity it brings to the questions that the modern white world poses and exposes. In Zen Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism therefore, mixes Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shintoism. The Japanese character is understood by this mixture, this triptych: faith, ethics and purity in a way. What brings these three values ​​together is the extraordinary sense of intimacy of the Japanese, a sensitivity based on modesty. Steve Jobs will forever be imbued with Japanese values ​​in Tassajara because he finds an aesthetic of life there.

In 2005, at Stanford University, Steve Jobs gave a vibrant speech that sounds more than ever like a testament. We retain the "Stay hungry, stay foolish" (3) of course, but what crowns this day is the intimacy and modesty of the speech. Steve Jobs recited the diary of his life that day in front of strangers who will remain unknown to him, with his words, his scars and his humor. Intimacy for Steve Jobs is the possibility of existing through the choices we make. Steve Jobs will have spent his whole life, deciding, again and again. Imposing an unfailing requirement on those around him because imposing it on himself. His hatred of dogma (it is understood that dogma is contrary to intimacy whether it is represented by the school, by white-collar or IT directors or even by geeks who believe they are living the big night because 'they bypassed a firewall), he always kept it as a breeding ground from which to draw a little freshness. Yes, Steve Jobs was a rebel, insolent and pedantic at times, going into a rage at the cynicism he had faced in the early days of his life and which remained his intimate enemy. He knew that cynicism equaled self-love, love of one's privileges, of one's little comforts. But Steve Jobs fought this temptation endlessly at home. So he fought it in others. Fighting white-collar cynicism meant making a product that all white-collar workers around the world said was impossible to make, and making that product a universal success. Steve Jobs dreamed of universal. Steve Jobs dreamed of universal as often people obsessed with authenticity. Steve Jobs used to say, “Design is a fun word. People believe that design means what something looks like. Design means how something works. The design of the Mac was not what it looked like even though that is part of it. First, it was how it worked. “And also in a recent interview, he admitted his concern vis-à-vis the younger generations who no longer knew how to be bored because of electronic objects. He remembered that it was precisely in these moments of boredom that he had invented these electronic objects. Here we can clearly see the irony of the modern world, which is constantly inventing remedies for the new diseases it generates.

While he is only a breath on the bed of his house in Palo Alto, Steve Jobs assesses the time that separates him from his birth? This time seems so short to him. A life is a snap of the fingers. The time that separates him from his death is much shorter and yet it seems distant to him. For two weeks, he no longer has the strength to move. He met all his friends. He looked with them and with his family for a way to say goodbye. Steve Jobs tells himself that he will have been blessed until the end. He will have had time to think about such details. His mind is still full of life. Since this morning, he repeats kinhin a hundred times; this zen walk which is not one and which makes it possible to understand the Ma. The Ma: the distance, the approach to things or people, the attention, the intensity! The Ma is one of those Japanese concepts whose depth alone equals the difficulty of understanding it for a Westerner. Steve Jobs understands that his whole life has never been anything but an approach to Ma. He takes up the thread of the kinhin in his thoughts. Wasn't his permanent desire to develop the user experience basically just an application of Ma? Steve Jobs, as his last day dawned, remembered that the “beginner has many possibilities, the expert few”. A breath, his last breath, comes out of him and traces a few musical notes in space. He just has time to read these notes. He recognizes them before going out. These are the notes from Bach's cello suite performed by Yo-Yo Ma a few days later in the Palo Alto cemetery. In a final, intimate tribute.

1- Steve Jobs had these famous and surprising words in the mouth of a CEO of an American Hi-Tech company: “I will exchange all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates”.

2- At first glance, the impact is weak in the United States where the very concept of mestizo does not exist. Barack Obama is considered black. Which is of course false, Barack Obama is a pure half-breed. His mother is white and his father black. For years, we have been pondered with crossbreeding, but crossbreeding does not exist. The half-breed is nowhere. The half-breed cannot be found. What's more, this contagion seems definitively adopted by Europe, which finds nothing wrong with the fact that Barack Obama is black.

An article on interbreeding will soon appear on this blog.

3- “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. Stanford's speech is available in French at this address: https://youtu.be/x1Z9Ggqr84s (video). At the end of the speech, Steve Jobs says this formula and explains its origin.