I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, 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.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 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?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college 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. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out 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 someday go to college.
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. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. 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 interesting.
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 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 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:
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.
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, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this 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 ten years later.
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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz 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 $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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 worlds 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, 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.
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. Sometimes life hits 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. 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. 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 until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
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 have 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.
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.
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 to 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.
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 and 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 I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its 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 intellectual concept:
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 is 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 is quite true.
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.
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 1960′s, 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, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
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 have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
今天，有荣幸来到各位从世界上最好的学校之一毕业的毕业典礼上。我从来没从大学毕业。说实话，这是我离大学毕业最近的一刻。今天，我只说三个故事，不谈大道理，三个故事就好。
第一个故事，是关于人生中的点点滴滴怎么串连在一起。
我在里德学院（Reed college）待了六个月就办休学了。到我退学前，一共休学了十八个月。那么，我为什么休学？
这得从我出生前讲起。我的亲生母亲当时是个研究生，年轻未婚妈妈，她决定让别人收养我。她强烈觉得应该让有大学毕业的人收养我，所以我出生时，她就 准备让我被一对律师夫妇收养。但是这对夫妻到了最后一刻反悔了，他们想收养女孩。所以在等待收养名单上的一对夫妻，我的养父母，在一天半夜里接到一通电 话，问他们「有一名意外出生的男孩，你们要认养他吗？」而他们的回答是「当然要」。后来，我的生母发现，我现在的妈妈从来没有大学毕业，我现在的爸爸则连 高中毕业也没有。她拒绝在认养文件上做最后签字。直到几个月后，我的养父母同意将来一定会让我上大学，她才软化态度。
十七年后，我上大学了。但是当时我无知选了一所学费几乎跟史丹佛一样贵的大学，我那工人阶级的父母所有积蓄都花在我的学费上。六个月后，我看不出念 这个书的价值何在。那时候，我不知道这辈子要干什么，也不知道念大学能对我有什么帮助，而且我为了念这个书，花光了我父母这辈子的所有积蓄，所以我决定休 学，相信船到桥头自然直。当时这个决定看来相当可怕，可是现在看来，那是我这辈子做过最好的决定之一。当我休学之后，我再也不用上我没兴趣的必修课，把时 间拿去听那些我有兴趣的课。
这一点也不浪漫。我没有宿舍，所以我睡在友人家里的地板上，靠着回收可乐空罐的五先令退费买吃的，每个星期天晚上得走七里的路绕过大半个镇去印度教 的 Hare Krishna神庙吃顿好料。我喜欢Hare Krishna神庙的好料。追寻我的好奇与直觉，我所驻足的大部分事物，后来看来都成了无价之宝。举例来说：
当时里德学院有着大概是全国最好的书法指导。在整个校园内的每一张海报上，每个抽屉的标签上，都是美丽的手写字。因为我休学了，可以不照正常选课程 序来，所以我跑去学书法。我学了serif与san serif字体，学到在不同字母组合间变更字间距，学到活版印刷伟大的地方。书法的美好、历史感与艺术感是科学所无法捕捉的，我觉得那很迷人。
我没预期过学的这些东西能在我生活中起些什么实际作用，不过十年后，当我在设计第一台麦金塔时，我想起了当时所学的东西，所以把这些东西都设计进了 麦金塔里，这是第一台能印刷出漂亮东西的计算机。如果我没沉溺于那样一门课里，麦金塔可能就不会有多重字体跟变间距字体了。又因为Windows抄袭了麦 金塔的使用方式，如果当年我没这样做，大概世界上所有的个人计算机都不会有这些东西，印不出现在我们看到的漂亮的字来了。当然，当我还在大学里时，不可能 把这些点点滴滴预先串在一起，但是这在十年后回顾，就显得非常清楚。
我再说一次，你不能预先把点点滴滴串在一起；唯有未来回顾时，你才会明白那些点点滴滴是如何串在一起的。所以你得相信，你现在所体会的东西，将来多 少会连接在一块。你得信任某个东西，直觉也好，命运也好，生命也好，或者业力。这种作法从来没让我失望，也让我的人生整个不同起来。
我的第二个故事，有关爱与失去。
我好运－年轻时就发现自己爱做什么事。我二十岁时，跟Steve Wozniak在我爸妈的车库里开始了苹果计算机的事业。我们拼命工作，苹果计算机在十年间从一间车库里的两个小伙子扩展成了一家员工超过四千人、市价二 十亿美金的公司，在那之前一年推出了我们最棒的作品－麦金塔，而我才刚迈入人生的第三十个年头，然后被炒鱿鱼。要怎么让自己创办的公司炒自己鱿鱼？好吧， 当苹果计算机成长后，我请了一个我以为他在经营公司上很有才干的家伙来，他在头几年也确实干得不错。可是我们对未来的愿景不同，最后只好分道扬镳，董事会 站在他那边，炒了我鱿鱼，公开把我请了出去。曾经是我整个成年生活重心的东西不见了，令我不知所措。
有几个月，我实在不知道要干什么好。我觉得我令企业界的前辈们失望－我把他们交给我的接力棒弄丢了。我见了创办HP的David Packard跟创办Intel的Bob Noyce，跟他们说我很抱歉把事情搞砸得很厉害了。我成了公众的非常负面示范，我甚至想要离开硅谷。但是渐渐的，我发现，我还是喜爱着我做过的事情，在 苹果的日子经历的事件没有丝毫改变我爱做的事。我被否定了，可是我还是爱做那些事情，所以我决定从头来过。
当时我没发现，但是现在看来，被苹果计算机开除，是我所经历过最好的事情。成功的沉重被从头来过的轻松所取代，每件事情都不那么确定，让我自由进入这辈子最有创意的年代。
接下来五年，我开了一家叫做NeXT的公司，又开一家叫做Pixar的公司，也跟后来的老婆谈起了恋爱。Pixar接着制作了世界上第一部全计算机 动画电影，玩具总动员，现在是世界上最成功的动画制作公司。然后，苹果计算机买下了NeXT，我回到了苹果，我们在NeXT发展的技术成了苹果计算机后来 复兴的核心。我也有了个美妙的家庭。
我很确定，如果当年苹果计算机没开除我，就不会发生这些事情。这帖药很苦口，可是我想苹果计算机这个病人需要这帖药。有时候，人生会用砖头打你的 头。不要丧失信心。我确信，我爱我所做的事情，这就是这些年来让我继续走下去的唯一理由。你得找出你爱的，工作上是如此，对情人也是如此。你的工作将填满 你的一大块人生，唯一获得真正满足的方法就是做你相信是伟大的工作，而唯一做伟大工作的方法是爱你所做的事。如果你还没找到这些事，继续找，别停顿。尽你 全心全力，你知道你一定会找到。而且，如同任何伟大的关系，事情只会随着时间愈来愈好。所以，在你找到之前，继续找，别停顿。
我的第三个故事，关于死亡。
当我十七岁时，我读到一则格言，好像是「把每一天都当成生命中的最后一天，你就会轻松自在。」这对我影响深远，在过去33年里，我每天早上都会照镜 子，自问：「如果今天是此生最后一日，我今天要干些什么？」每当我连续太多天都得到一个「没事做」的答案时，我就知道我必须有所变革了。
提醒自己快死了，是我在人生中下重大决定时，所用过最重要的工具。因为几乎每件事－所有外界期望、所有名誉、所有对困窘或失败的恐惧－在面对死亡 时，都消失了，只有最重要的东西才会留下。提醒自己快死了，是我所知避免掉入自己有东西要失去了的陷阱里最好的方法。人生不带来，死不带去，没什么道理不 顺心而为。
一年前，我被诊断出癌症。我在早上七点半作断层扫描，在胰脏清楚出现一个肿瘤，我连胰脏是什么都不知道。医生告诉我，那几乎可以确定是一种不治之 症，我大概活不到三到六个月了。医生建议我回家，好好跟亲人们聚一聚，这是医生对临终病人的标准建议。那代表你得试着在几个月内把你将来十年想跟小孩讲的 话讲完。那代表你得把每件事情搞定，家人才会尽量轻松。那代表你得跟人说再见了。
我整天想着那个诊断结果，那天晚上做了一次切片，从喉咙伸入一个内视镜，从胃进肠子，插了根针进胰脏，取了一些肿瘤细胞出来。我打了镇静剂，不醒人 事，但是我老婆在场。她后来跟我说，当医生们用显微镜看过那些细胞后，他们都哭了，因为那是非常少见的一种胰脏癌，可以用手术治好。所以我接受了手术，康复了。
这是我最接近死亡的时候，我希望那会继续是未来几十年内最接近的一次。经历此事后，我可以比之前死亡只是抽象概念时要更肯定告诉你们下面这些：
没有人想死。即使那些想上天堂的人，也想活着上天堂。但是死亡是我们共有的目的地，没有人逃得过。这是注定的，因为死亡简直就是生命中最棒的发明， 是生命变化的媒介，送走老人们，给新生代留下空间。现在你们是新生代，但是不久的将来，你们也会逐渐变老，被送出人生的舞台。抱歉讲得这么戏剧化，但是这 是真的。
你们的时间有限，所以不要浪费时间活在别人的生活里。不要被信条所惑－盲从信条就是活在别人思考结果里。不要让别人的意见淹没了你内在的心声。最重要的，拥有跟随内心与直觉的勇气，你的内心与直觉多少已经知道你真正想要成为什么样的人。任何其它事物都是次要的。
在我年轻时，有本神奇的杂志叫做Whole Earth Catalog，当年我们很迷这本杂志。那是一位住在离这不远的Menlo Park的Stewart Brand发行的，他把杂志办得很有诗意。那是1960年代末期，个人计算机跟桌上出版还没发明，所有内容都是打字机、剪刀跟拍立得相机做出来的。杂志内 容有点像印在纸上的Google，在Google出现之前35年就有了：理想化，充满新奇工具与神奇的注记。
Stewart跟他的出版团队出了好几期Whole Earth Catalog，然后出了停刊号。当时是1970年代中期，我正是你们现在这个年龄的时候。在停刊号的封底，有张早晨乡间小路的照片，那种你去爬山时会经过的乡间小路。在照片下有行小字：
求知若饥，虚心若愚。
那是他们亲笔写下的告别讯息，我总是以此自许。当你们毕业，展开新生活，我也以此期许你们。
求知若饥，虚心若愚。
非常谢谢大家。
原文地址：http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
译文转自yeeyan.com: http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/dding/76
