A new bit from Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’ biographer, during a recent Huffington Post panel:
Every baby boom generation person who has to give a college commencement talk uses the phrase “follow your passion.” But that’s why no one has written a book calling us the greatest generation. The important point is to not just follow your passion but something larger than yourself. It ain’t just about you and your damn passion. I remember talking exactly a year ago right now to Steve Jobs, who was very ill, and I asked him that question: He said, “Yeah, we’re always talking about following your passion. But we’re all part of the flow of history… And we take things out of that flow that other people have created. And that’s why our lives are so great. So you’ve got to put something back into the flow of history that’s going to help your community, help other people, so that 20, 30, 40 years from now, even if it’s a small pebble you put back in, people will say, this person didn’t just have a passion, he cared about making something that other people could benefit from.”