The real sting here isn't about rejecting other people's expectations—it's the implied math that makes this urgent rather than preachy. Jobs assumes you *know* your time is finite (we all do, abstractly), but he's suggesting that living by someone else's script is the only way to truly *feel* that scarcity. A woman I know spent twelve years in law school and practice because her parents had dreamed it for her; when she finally quit at thirty-five, she didn't feel liberated so much as robbed, watching her actual interests finally surface with precious little runway left. The quote's power lies in treating borrowed lives not as a moral failure but as a practical theft—from yourself.