Don,t Give up Finding Your Passion
不要放弃寻找你的激情
Pretty much anytime I got a chance to do something cool, I tried to grab for it.
只要有机会去做那些很酷的事,我将会毫不犹豫地去争取。
I am glad to be here today, Hell, I am glad to be anywhere today.
President Cohon asked me to come and give the charge to the graduates. I assure you, it,s nothing compared to the charge you have just given me.
And the great thing about this university unlike almost all the other ones I know of is that nobody gets in your way when you try to do it. And that,s just fantastic.
I love this place and I love all of the people and I am very grateful to Jerry Cohon and everyone else for all the kindness that has shown me.
Last August I was told that in all likelihood I had three to six months left to live. I am on month nine now. Somebody said to me, in light of those numbers, wow, so you are really beating the Grim Reaper. And what I said without even thinking about is that we don,t beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well, and living fully.
For the Reaper will come for all of us, the question is what do we do between the time we are born and the time he shows up.
Because he shows up it is too late to do all the things that you,re always gonna kind of “get round to”. So I think the only advice I can give you on how to live your life well is, first off, remember, it,s a cliche, but love cliche, “it is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed, it is the things we do not”.
Because I assure you I,ve done a lot of stupid things and none of them bother me. All the mistakes, all the dopy things and all the times I was embarrassed they don,t matter. What matter is that, I can kind of look back and say, “pretty much anytime I got a chance to do something cool, I tried to grab for it.” And that,s where my solace come from.
The second thing I would add to that, and I didn,t coordinate on the subject of this word but I think it,s the right word that comes up, is passion. And you will need to find your passion. Many of you have already done it, many of you will later, many of you will take till your 30s or 40s. But don,t give up on finding it. Alright? Because then all you,re doing is waiting for the Reaper. Find your passion and follow it.
And if there,s anything I have learned in my life, you will not find passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and the more money you have, the more you will just look around and use that as the metric, and there will always be someone with more.
So your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. And honors and awards are nice things but only to be the extent that they regard the real respect from your peers. And to be thought well of by other people that you think even more highly of is a tremendous honor that I,ve been granted.
Find you passion and in my experience, no matter what you do at work or what you do in official settings, that passion would be grounded in people. And it will be grounded in the relationships you have with people, and what they think of you, when your time comes. And if you can gain the respect of those around you, and the passion and true love, and I,ve said this before, but I waited till 39 to get married because I had to wait that long to find someone where her happiness was more important than mine. And if nothing else I hope that all of you can find that kind of passion and that kind of love in your life.
Thank you!
很高兴今天能够来到这里。天哪,今天不论在哪里我都很高兴。
柯汉校长邀请我来给毕业生做些鼓励。我向诸位保证,你们刚刚给我的鼓励更多。
这所学校胜过其他学校的地方在于,当你尝试实现梦想时,没有人会阻拦你。这太美妙了!
我无比热爱这所学校,也爱这里的所有人。我十分感激柯汉校长和我的同事,感谢他们给我的温暖。
去年8月,我被告知很可能只能再活三到六个月了。可现在已是第九个月了。当我说完前面的那些数字后,有些人对我说:天哪,你真的战神了冷酷的死神。而我毫不犹疑地回答他:仅靠多活几天是不能战胜死神的。战胜死神最好的方式是活得好,活得充实。
人终会有一死,关键是从出生的那一刻起到死神降临的这一段时间内,我们都做了什么。
当死神降临时,想要做些我们一直想做而没时间去做的事,却已为时晚矣。因此,关于如何才能活得好,我给大家的唯一建议是,马上去做,请千万牢记,虽说这是老生常谈,但我喜欢老生常谈,“临终时我们不会后悔做过某些事,而是后悔没有去做某些事。”
坦率地说,我也曾做过很多蠢事,但它们中没有一件令我烦恼。所有那些犯过的错,做过的蠢事,还有令我尴尬的时刻,其实它们都不重要。真正重要的是,当我回首往事时,我会说:“只要有机会去做那些很酷的事,我将会毫不犹豫地去争取。”这才让我足堪告慰。
第二件我想说的事就是,我并没有规划用这个字眼,但我想这个字眼很合适,那就是“热情”二字。你们必须要找到自己的热情所在。你们当中有些人已经找到了,许多人将来也会找到,也许很多人要到三四十岁时才找得到。但千万不要放弃寻找你的热情。好吗?因为你若放弃了,那你所能做的就只是等待死亡而已。去寻找你的热情所在,并追随它的脚步!
如果说我这一生中学到了什么的话,那就是你不可能在物质中找到热情,你不会在金钱中找到热情。因为你拥有的财富越多,你就越有可能用它去衡量你周围的世界,然而总是有人比你更富有。
因此,热情必须来自于能从内心激发你的东西。荣誉和奖赏是好事,但仅限于出于同行们真心的尊敬。或是像我一样能够被自己所尊敬的人认同,这才是最大的荣幸。
去寻找你的热情吧。在我看来,无论你从事什么样的工作,处在怎样的环境当中,激情都是和人有关的。热情基于人与人之间的关系,基于当你离开人世时,人们对你的看法。如果你能赢得身边人的尊敬,正如我之前所说的你有热情和真爱。我等到39岁才结婚,是因为我必须等这么久才能找到一位我视其幸福比我的幸福更重要的人。抛开其他一切不谈,我祝在座的各位,此生都能够找到那样的热情和真爱。
谢谢!
延伸阅读
兰迪·波许(1960-2008),卡内基·梅隆大学的计算机科学、人机交互及设计教授。2007 年,身患胰腺癌、生命还剩几个月的兰迪教授做了一场风靡全美、题为“真正实现你的童年梦想”的讲座,感动、鼓舞了无数的美国青年。与前者不同,在此篇演讲中,兰迪教授给出了更加朴实的人生建议。本文是他在母校卡内基·梅隆大学毕业典礼上的最后演讲。
institution n.机构; 惯例,制度,规定,建立;
likelihood n.可能,可能性;
stupid adj.愚蠢的; 迟钝的; 乏味的;昏迷不醒的; n.傻子,笨蛋;
Hopes not Dying, Keep on Fighting
希望不死,永存斗志
Failure may be a part of your college lives and careers, and that how you respond to any pitfalls will define them.
失败也许是大学生活和职业生涯的一部分,未来取决于你们如何面对困难和错误。
Serving as your First Lady is an honor and a privilege…but back when we first came together four years ago, I still had some concerns about this journey we,d begun.
While I believed deeply in my husband,s vision for this country…and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President…like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance.
How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?
And the truth is, I loved the life we had built for our girls…I deeply loved the man I had built that life with…and I didn,t want that to change if he became President.
I loved Barack just the way he was.
You see, even though back then Barack was Senator and a presidential candidate…to me, he was still the guy who,d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door…he was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he,d found in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small.
But when Barack started telling me about his family that,s when I knew I had found a kindred spirit, someone whose values and upbringing were so much like mine.