In London, students have been protesting at the proposal to raise the fees for attending university.  As I write, MPs are facing a controversial vote in Parliament which will have been decided by the time this post is published.  In the day’s news and commentary journalists have been highlighting just how many MPs on both sides of the house, in the run-up to the Parliamentary debate, have been undecided which way to vote.

As a country, our need to balance our books is a current driver for this proposal and yet, it seems to me, there are much larger issues at stake.  They are not all negative, so that – even whilst remembering that my own university education was entirely paid for by the state – I am undecided which way to lean.  I am aware, for example, that many of our country’s greatest entrepreneurs did not complete a university education and I wonder if, by inviting students to consider what they want from university and to calculate whether or not they want to make the investment needed to achieve this (financial or other) return-on-investment, we encourage the very entrepreneurialism which our politicians so often say is lacking (even whilst encouraging its surpression by the messages they give about and through education – a whole topic of its own).

It’s not that I am decided on this issue – I am open to look at it from all sides and I am sure that it would take more looking at than I am likely to do to reach an informed and considered conclusion.  I’d like to think that this is what the politicians are doing on my behalf, even whilst recognising the likelihood that more immediate concerns will stand in the way of a much larger picture.

I am, though, sure that – with or without education – we are born with resources which are apt to manifest themselves.  Insofar as education adds value, it does so by supporting us in becoming the person we are meant to become – like the acorn becoming the oak – rather than by seeking to mould us into something we are not.  Everything that I feel most passionate about – education, training, coaching, leadership – has this truth at its heart.

So it was striking to me as I found myself watching, once again, one of the wonderful short talks on http://www.ted.com/, to hear Steve Jobs talk to students graduating from Stanford University about how to live before you die.  Jobs spoke about his own experience of dropping out of university only to spend a further eighteen months dropping in on those lectures that most appealed to him whilst kipping on the floors of his friends and returning Coke bottles in order to get the 5 cent return which would pay for his food.  He talked about how his learning served him in setting up what became Apple.  He talked about being sacked from Apple and, by a quirk of fate, setting up a company that later became part of Apple so that he, one-time CEO of Apple became CEO again.  Jobs could not foresee the outcomes that would come from following his instincts in this somewhat unconventional way and still, they came, and they came from doing what he most enjoyed.

And in the midst of his fascinating talk came the most arresting of his comments which I offer once more for the sheer joy of his insight when he says:  Your time is limited, so don’t waste it by living someone else’s life.

If you were living the life that you – and only you – were born to live, what life would that be?