The New Yorker's offering was, "Jobs, we learn, was a bully. He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe. A friend of his tells Isaacson. He screams at subordinates. He cries like a small child when he does not get his way. He gets stopped for driving a hundred miles an hour, honks angrily at the officer for taking too long to write up the ticket, and then resumes his journey at a hundred miles an hour. He sits in a restaurant and sends his food back three times."
Does not sound like much genius stuff does it?
I am going to go way out on a limb here and say, "it does."
The genius of Jobs was his ability to exhibit his real feelings, unrestrained, the type of feelings that most of us are too frightened to do. And more than that, he accepted the consequences of his actions. He said what he felt. He could do it because he was rich," you quickly retort. No, he was like that when he was raising money in bare feet. Most of us are afraid to cry for fear of being embarrassed. We eat the food even though it was not what we ordered because we do not want to make a fuss. In other words, we settle. We compromise because it is easier and less risky. We believe that compromise is the route to happiness to success. In fact, compromise is the route to mediocrity. When you settle for less, guess what you get? Less.
Jobs' genius was being who he was. Uncompromising. Not willing to settle for less.
Like a stream, most Americans meander along taking the path of least resistance, recognizing but not truly understanding, that the journey is everything. Wow. We put up with a government that strangles our economy because it is too much work to effect a change. And so on.
Genius is uncompromising. And that is what Jobs' real genius was.
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