"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

That's the question that Steve Jobs pitched to John Sculley before Sculley left his job as President of Pepsi for Apple.  It's an amazing question...and it epitomizes Jobs' personality - hubris, arrogance, vision and courage.  

For the past week, I've been sporadically reading Walter Isaacson's biography, "Steve Jobs."  I'm only about 20% of the way through but I’ve come to understand that Steve Jobs was an asshole.  While Apple fanboys may disagree, he really was.  He lied to Woz about the amount of money they would make on “Breakout” (so he could pilfer some of it), he abandoned his 23 year-old girlfriend when he impregnated her and he adamantly denied he was the father even after a paternity test indicated the chances of him being the father were over 94%.  He was an asshole. 

Jobs and I have that in common, as I’ve also been an asshole for many years of my life.  It may seem counterintuitive, but from my experience, I’ve learned that it’s much harder being an asshole than being kind.  Ask any asshole, including myself, whether we’d rather be an ass or kind, and we’ll choose the latter.  Being the former is torturous; it’s lonely and full of regrets.  You have fewer friends than you do fingers and you always reminisce about something you said that was incredibly hurtful to another person.  I would much rather be kind than be an asshole, and my New Year’s resolution for about ten years running has been to change that about myself.  Alas, I’m sure I’ll resolve to do the same thing for the next ten years, but I only hope that I can be better at executing it in the future than I have been in the past.  Kind people are more enjoyable to be around.  It’s as simple as that.  They may make fewer dents in the world individually, but collectively, they have a greater impact than asses.

But Jobs wasn’t just an ass.  He also was a leader of men.  He had a vision to make beautiful products, the courage to push aside anyone who doubted him and the genius to execute his vision.  I hope I don’t just have the ass part.