Everything we do carries meaning.

Such meaning is based on the intent of our actions, and it is the result of our history.

There is a purpose in everything we do.

Neither the intent nor the purpose needs to be grandiose.

It actually usually happens without any second thought. It often isn’t anything that was specifically planned to have meaning.

It is through the sum of events and actions that it appears and eventually becomes evident even to the one acting.

It is how our history can be transformed. And maybe it is simply how our memory connects the dots between the things we did that have become useful and leaves everything else out of the picture.

Maybe that’s how Steve Jobs realized one day how relevant it had been for him to drop by in a calligraphy class by Trappist monk Robert Palladino. It happened during his brief stay at Reeds College. Jobs had noticed how throughout the campus, every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand-calligraphed. He decided that he wanted to learn how to do it. 10 years later it all came back to him when he worked on the Mac. It transformed the way computers displayed fonts, providing us with multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

Naturally, this story is also somewhat exceptional. But maybe its exceptional aspect is much less relevant than what the story highlights. It tells how beauty has always been a guide to the way Jobs designed products.