I’ve often wondered who my heroes might be in my ordinary life. I mean, I’m just an ordinary person working as a dentist, and I have little special interests. But thinking seriously I do have some. Let’s go over them one by one. I’ve learnt one thing though: to make a blog or newspaper column or whatever close to that sustainable, never write one long piece and then idle your platform for weeks. Split what you want to say and post them as a series. That’s exactly what I’m doing now.

First let’s define what a “hero” means to an ordinary person. A hero in a disaster movie, in short, is one who saves lives. So are heroes in our every day lives. Heroes save us from our boring routine. They change things, and by doing so our lives are enriched.

Steve Jobs is one great example. You may easily refer to his creations like iPhone, iPad and the Mac, or go further to the whole digital lifestyle he shaped. Yes, those are some examples how Steve enriched our lives. But there’s much more than that why Steve Jobs is a hero.

For one, Steve Jobs was “cross-platform”. Although Apple softwares and hardwares, and even its services, were not exactly cross-platform, Steve Jobs himself was. He’s interested in tech, and he had exposure in arts and music. It was this combination that inspired him to create such products as iPods and iPhones that could integrate deeply with our daily lives.

Second, Steve had OCD. He paid great attention to details. This character might have been inherited from his adoptive father, Paul. In his biography, it was mentioned that Paul Jobs refused to use poor wood for the back of cabinets, or to build a fence that wasn’t constructed as well on the back side as it was the front. Steve brought that love of details to the design and manufacturing process of Apple products. In my own work this level of care is also important. Our big boss at HH always says doing 10 per cent better at one thing may not be significant, but if you do 10 per cent better at everything, 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1… is huge, and our patients would notice the difference. He may be a layman and doesn’t know much about Dentistry, but his words sometimes make sense.

One more. Steve had blemishes in his life. Yes, heroes make mistakes too. His greatest mistake was probably his delay for treatment of his pancreatic cancer. When he was first diagnosed with cancer, his doctor told him it was a curable form of pancreatic cancer. For unknown reasons Steve decided against having surgery, and resorted to some absurd herbal medicine before he finally did the surgery nine months later. Had he got that surgery sooner, his cancer might not have metastasized and he could go on and on to revolutionize industries, one at a time. The message of this story is that heroes make (literally) fatal mistakes too. When we make mistakes, just take it easy, and try to remedy our wrongdoings. In case there is no antidote to our mistakes, try to do other good things. In Steve’s case, he accelerated development of the iPad after his second surgery, the liver transplant, and formally declared the coming of the post-PC era in 2010.

[TBC]