个人成长 - 乔布斯(Stay hungry, Stay foolish)
乔布斯2005年6月在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲。
文章来源
- 作者：乔布斯
- 来源：乔布斯2005年6月在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲
概览
斯蒂夫•保罗•乔布斯前任苹果电脑的首席执行官，创办人之一。同时也是Pixar动画公司的董事长及首席执行官。这篇毕业演讲我2006年第一次听到后，至今难忘。他以生命影响生命，语重心长，蕴含哲理，推己及人，活出自我！
故事 I：穿珠成链（connecting the dots）
- 为何辍学？
- 花费巨额学费，上大学的价值和意义？
- 时间和生命，应该花在什么地方？
- 如何看待生命里曾经不经意的发生？
- 何以获得勇气，以追随内心而动？
- 过往的经历一定会在未来穿珠成链，对未来有何影响？
you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards
故事 II：失之东隅，收之桑榆（love and loss）
- 被自己创建的公司解雇，是塞翁失马？还是祸不单行？
- 如何看待失败？如何梳理失败？
- 成功与失败，孰好孰坏？孰对孰错？何喜何悲？
- 是什么力量能让一个人从失败中奋起？
- 做你热爱的事情，对人的一生有多重要？
故事III：面对生死（death）
- 假如今天是生命末日，我们如何面对自己？
- 面对死亡，还有何事比生死更重大之事？
- 我们为何患得患失，为何做事不能跟随自己内心？
- 生命有限，所以不要浪费时间活在别人的世界里。不要被教条束缚--束缚在他人的思想里。不要让别人的意见盖过了你内在的心声。
- 最重要的，要有勇气追随自己的内心与直觉。你的内心与直觉某种程度上早已知道你真正想要成为什么样的人。其它任何事物都可以等闲视之。
- 虚怀若谷，守愚藏拙。
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
中英全文
全文如下：
I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college, and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
今天，本人荣幸至此，与诸君一起见证毕业，见证世界上最棒（译者按，他没用best）大学之一的毕业典礼。说实话，我不是大学毕业，这是我离大学毕业最近的一次。今天，我想分享取自我生命的三个故事。仅此而已，不高谈阔论，三则故事送给诸君。
TIP
The first story is about connecting the dots.
TIP
故事一，关于“穿珠成链”。
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
我在里德学院上学六个月就办退学了。但我真正意义离开学校前，“蹭课”还蹭了大概十八个月。（听众笑）那么，我为什么休学？
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife -- except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.
这得从我出生前说起。我的生母那时年轻，还在念研究生，所以她决定让我被领养。她坚定认为我的收养人必须是大学毕业。所以基本万事就位，我一出生就有一对律师夫妇收养我。只有一事例外，他们在我出生后，几乎最后一刻，反悔了。他们决定收养女孩。
So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.
所以在备选名单上的另一对夫妻，也就是我的养父母在那天半夜接到电话，问“有一名意外出生的男孩，你们要领养他吗？”他们的回答是“当然要！”我生母却发现，我养母没上过大学，养父连高中都没毕业，所以她拒绝在最终领养文件上签字。谈了几个月，直到我养父母保证将来一定会送我上大学，她才松口。
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.
十七年后，我如愿以偿上了大学。但是我竟天真地选了一所学费几乎跟斯坦福一样贵的大学。我那工薪阶层的养父母倾尽积蓄为我交了学费。六个月后，我看不出这样上大学的价值。我竟不知道这辈子要干什么，也不知道念大学怎么能帮我知道这些。然而我却要花他们赡养余生的钱交学费。
So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
所以我决定退学，相信车到山前必有路。这个决定做得挺吓人，但是现在回看，那是我这辈子做过最好的决定之一。退学之后，我再也不用花时间上那些没啥营养的必修课，而把时间拿去蹭听我超有兴趣的课。
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned coke bottles for the five cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
不是所有事都随心所愿。我没有宿舍，只能将就睡朋友家地板上。我靠退可乐空瓶子5美分的钱买吃的。每到星期天晚上，我要走七英里穿过镇子去哈尔克利希纳印度教神庙吃顿好饭，并乐此不疲。就这样追随我的好奇与直觉，很多奇遇后来都成了无价之宝。举例来说。
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
当时里德学院有着大概是全国最好的书法教育。纵观校园，每一张海报，每个抽屉上的标签，都是漂亮的手写体。因为退学，不用上常规课，我决定上书法课学习书写。我学会了serif与san serif字体，学会不同字母组合的字间距量化，学会如何让高大上的印刷体呈现高大上。书体精微之美好、历史感与艺术性，是科学课所无法企及的。我发现这令我着迷。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the "Mac" would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.
我没期望学这些东西能在我生命中有什么实际应用。不过十年后，我在设计第一台苹果电脑时，这些所学尽现眼前。所以我们将其尽数设计进电脑，这是第一台有漂亮印刷体的计算机。所以，如果不是我蹭了那门课，苹果电脑绝对不会拥有多种字体和间距比例适当的字号。如若不是Windows抄袭Mac（听众鼓掌大笑），其他个人电脑很可能就没有这样的印刷字体。如果我不退学，我就不会去蹭那门书法课，那么个人计算机可能就不会有我们创作的这么赞的字体。当然，我不可能在大学时候就能知道，过去发生的一切将在未来穿珠成链。待到十年后再回顾时，一切是那么一清二楚。
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever -- because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
再次强调，你无法穿起未来的珠子成链；你只能穿起过往。所以你要相信，当下的珠子在未来一定会被穿起来。你要笃信某样东西，直觉，命运，生命，因果，或是其它，因为相信穿珠成链的道理，这个“信”将会赋予你信心去跟随内心。并且它会引领你不走寻常路，并能创造不凡。
TIP
My second story is about love and loss.
TIP
故事二，失之东隅、收之桑榆。
I was lucky -- I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz1 and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a two billion dollar company with over 4000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation -- the Macintosh -- a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.
我是幸运的，因为年轻时就已发现自己爱做的事。二十岁时，在父母的车库里，我跟Steve Wozniak创建了“苹果”公司。我们奋力工作，十年后“苹果”从一个车库加两人的公司，发展到四千多员工、二十亿美元那么大，我们推出苹果电脑Mac-最棒的产品，仅比那个时间早一年多，我刚迈入三十岁。
And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. And so at 30, I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
之后我被解雇了。我怎么会被自己开创的公司解雇？是这样的，随着公司壮大，我们雇佣了一个很有才华的家伙，我以为他能与我一起经营好公司。头一两年，一切还发展正常。可是很快，我们对公司未来的愿景产生分歧，最后大吵一架。这一架后，董事们都站在他一边。就这样，30岁，我出局了，大庭广众地被踢出局。我花一辈子构建的事业飘然而去，粉碎一地。
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -- that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.
好几个月，我都完全不知道做什么。我感觉我让创业的前辈们失望，他们交给我接力棒，我却弄掉了。我去见了David Packard（译者按，惠普创始人）和Bob Noyce（译者按，英特尔创始人），试图跟他们道歉我把事情搞得有多砸。成了一个众目睽睽的失败者，我甚至一度想逃离硅谷。
But something slowly began to dawn on me: I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
但是某种意念慢慢开始让我明朗：我依旧热爱我之所为。虽然“苹果”的局面没有丝毫改变。虽然我被公司抛弃，可是我依旧深爱，所以我决定卷土重来。
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
当时我无慧眼可见，但现在看来，被“苹果”开除，是我所碰到过最好的事情。追求成功的压力被重新开始的轻松所取代，虽然前途未卜，却让我放飞自我而进入一生中最有创造力的年代。
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, and I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
之后的五年中，我开了两家公司，一家叫 NeXT，另一家叫Pixar。我还爱上一个了不起的女人，后来她成为我太太。Pixar起步制作了世界上第一部电脑动画电影-玩具总动员，现在它已成为世界上最成功的动画制作公司。不可思议的转折出现了，“苹果”收购NeXT，于是我重返“苹果”。而且我们在NeXT构建的技术成了“苹果”目前复兴的核心。此刻，我和Laurene终成眷属。
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometime life -- Sometimes life going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love.
我相当确定，如果不是被“苹果”踢出来，上述一切都不会发生。良药苦口，但病者需之。人生有时就会给你迎头一击。但我们不要丧失信念。令我信服的是，只有你热爱的事情才能驱动你向前。
And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking -- and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking -- don't settle.
工作的付出等同于你对所爱之事的付出，此话不虚！因为工作会填满你大部分生活，让自己真正满意的原则只有一个-做你认为伟大的事。做伟大的事只有一个原则，就是爱你所做！如果你还没找到感觉，请继续寻找，不要停顿。只要全心全意，你会知道你何时找到。同时，如同那些伟大爱情，愈久弥香。所以，继续寻找，不要停顿。
TIP
My third story is about death.
TIP
故事三，面对生死
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
我十七岁那年，我读到一则格言，大概是说“如果你把每一天当生命末日来活，总有一天你会发现你是对的！”这句话深入我心，此后的33年里，我每天早上都会对镜自问：“假如今天是我生命末日，我还想做我要做的事吗？”如果连续几天答案都是“不”，我就知道我需要有所改变了。
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
时刻记着自己死亡将近，是我用过的最重要的方法，帮我做人生的重大选择。因为几乎每件事-所有身外所求、所有骄傲之作、所有对窘迫或失败的恐惧-在死亡面前，都不足挂齿，糟粕尽去，精华自留。记着自己死亡在即，也是最好的办法让你避免落入思维陷阱，患得患失。赤条条无牵挂，没理由不随心而为。
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
大概一年前，我被诊出癌症。那天早上七点三十分做的扫描，清楚显示胰腺长出一个肿瘤，那时我对胰腺一无所知。医生告诉我，几乎可以确定是不治之症，我大概还能活三到六个月。医生建议我回家，把急事先安排好，这是医生对临终病人的暗语吧。这意味着你得试着在几个月内跟孩子把本来十年要说的话说完。这意味着每件事情都要做最后了结，以便家人不为难于此。这也意味着真的要说再见了。
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I'm fine now.
我整天与诊断为伴。后来一个晚上给我做了一次活检，从喉咙伸入一个内窥镜，穿过胃进到肠子，将探针伸进胰脏，取下一些肿瘤细胞出来。我当时全身麻醉，一无所知。我太太在场，她后来告诉我，当医生们用显微镜看过那些细胞后，都哭了，因为他们发现这是一种非常少见的可通过手术治愈的胰腺癌。我于是接受了手术，并且谢天谢地，我康复了。
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It's Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true.
这是我最“近距离”的一次面对生死，我希望未来几十年它都是最“近”的（译者按，不要离死亡再近了）。从鬼门关闯出来，此刻给大家讲对生死的理解，我的确定性大过讲死亡有意义的那个时候。干干脆脆说：没有人想死。即使人们都想上天堂，也不想为了去天堂而就死。（听众笑）但是死亡是我们共同的终点，无人能免。天命使然，因为死很可能是生命唯一最好的创作，它代理生命交替，推陈而出新。现在，你们是新生代，但是不久的将来，你们也会渐渐老去，离开人生舞台。抱歉讲这么可怕，但这是真实不虚。
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
生命有限，所以不要浪费时间活在别人的世界里。不要被教条束缚--束缚在他人的思想里。不要让别人的意见盖过了你内在的心声。最重要的，要有勇气追随自己的内心与直觉。你的内心与直觉某种程度上早已知道你真正想要成为什么样的人。其它任何事物都可以等闲视之。
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the "bibles" of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
在我年轻时，有本神奇的杂志叫做《全球目录》，是我们那代人的经典读物。主编是Stewart Brand，住在门罗帕克，离这不远。他以诗意的笔触创编杂志。那是1960年代末，个人计算机和电脑排版都没出现，所有排版都是靠打字机、剪刀和宝立得相机完成。它类似纸制版的谷歌，可是比谷歌早出现35年。这本杂志很理想主义，内容上全是实用工具和伟大的见解。
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I've always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stewart和他的团队出版了好几期《全球目录》，完成自然使命便无疾而终。他们出版了最后一期。那是1970年代中期，我跟你们这般大。最后一期的封底，是一张清晨乡间小路的照片，那种你搭便车冒险旅行时常见的景象。照片下印了一行字：虚怀若谷，守愚藏拙。这正是他们的告别寄语，虚怀若谷，守愚藏拙。我一直以此自勉。今天，你们行将毕业，革故鼎新，我以此共勉。
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
虚怀若谷，守愚藏拙。
Thank you all very much.
非常谢谢大家。