Thank you, I’m honour to be with you today for your commencement from one of finest universities in the world; truth be told, ah, I’ve never graduated from colleage and this is closest i’ve ever gotten to colleage graduation, today i wanna tell you 3 stories from my life, that’s it, no big deal, just 3 stories.
谢谢大家，我很荣幸今天能够参加世界名牌大学之一的毕业典礼；老实说，我从来没有大学毕业，并且这次应该是我曾经离大学毕业最近的一次了，今天我想告诉你们我的三个故事，就这些，没其它的，仅仅只有三个故事。
the first story is about connecting the dots, i droped out the Reed-Colleage after the first six month but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months so before i really quit, so why’d i drop out？
第一个故事是关于连接点点滴滴的，在开始六个月之后我从 Reed-Colleage 辍学了，但是在真正辍学之前，我作为旁听生另外呆了十八个月，那么我为什么要辍学呢？
it started before i was born, my biological mother was young unwed graduate-student and she decided to put me up for the adoption,she felt very strongly that i should be adopted by coleage graduates so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when i poped out they decided for the last minute that they really wanted a girl. so my parents who’re on the waiting list got a call in the middle of 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 Colleage and 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.
这一切从我出生前就开始了，我的生母曾是一位年轻的未婚毕业生，她决定把我交给别人抚养，她意志非常强烈我应该被拥有大学文凭的人领养，所以，所有的事情都是预设好的 - 当我出生就交由一位律师和他的妻子领养，只可惜当我出生时，他(她)们在最后一分钟决定希望要一个女孩；所以在候选名单上的我的父母半夜接到一个电话，被问到：“我们这里有个上家不要的男孩，你们想要吗？”，他(她)们说：“当然“。我的生母后来发现我的母亲从没大学毕业，我的父亲从没高中毕业。她拒绝在最终领养文件上签字，几个月之后，当我的父母承诺我会上大学时，她只有让步了，这一切就是我这一生的开始。
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 my with life and no idea how college was going to help me figured out and here i was spending all the money my parents saving their entire life. so i decided to drop out and trusted it would all work out okay it was pretty scary at the time but looking back it was one of the best decisions i’ve ever made.
十七年之后，我确实上大学了，但是我天真的选择了一所学费和 Stanford 差不多一样的大学，我的工薪阶层父母的所有存款将会被花在了这所大学的学费上，六个月之后我看不到任何的价值，我不清楚我的一生到底想要什么，也不清楚大学将会如何帮我弄明白，这时我将会把我父母这一生的存款都花掉. 所以我决定辍学并相信这一切将会自然而然有好的出路，这一切在那时确实挺吓人的，但是回首望去，这是我当时做的最好的决定之一。
The minute i droped out i could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me and begin droping in on the ones that looked far more interesting, It wasn’t all romatic, I didn’t have dorm-room so i slept on the floor in friends rooms, I returned the coke-bottles for the five cent-deposits to buy food with and i walked serveral miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krushna 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 courtry, throughout the campus, every poster every label and every drawer was beautiful hand-calligraphed, because i had droped 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 Sarif and Sanrif typefaces about varying the amount of space between diferent letter combinations, about what makes great typagraphy great, it was beautiful, historic, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture and i found it fascinating.
我一休学我就可以停止去上我不感兴趣的必修课并开始去上那些看起来更加有趣的课程，这一点都不浪漫，我没有寝室，所以我睡在朋友房间的地板上，我返还可口可乐的瓶子为了五美分的押金来买食物吃，并且我每周日晚为了吃上一顿美餐而穿过小镇走几公里到 Hare Krushna 寺庙，我喜爱这种方式，并且很多我所踌躇的事情伴随着我的好奇与直觉发展之后变成了无价的经历，我来告诉你们一个例子，Reed 大学在那个时候也许拥有全国最好的书法课程，充斥着整个校园，每个电线杆，每个标签与每个抽屉上都是漂亮的手绘书法，因为我休学了，不用去上那些正规的课程，我决定去上那些书法课程来学习如何做到这些，我学了 Sarif 与 Sanrif 字体 - 在不同的字体组合之间花样编排大量的空格 - 怎样才能让书法变得好看, 这一切很美丽，具有历史性，艺术上微妙的，某种方式上科学也无法捕获，我发现这一切如此迷人。
none of these had even a hope of any pratical 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 the all into the Mac, it was the first computer with beautiful typography, if i had never droped in on that single course in College, the Mac would’ve never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. and since Windows just copied the Mac it’s likely that no personal computers would have them, if i had never droped out i would’ve never droped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do, ofcourse 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.
这些曾经在我生活中没有一个可以是实际帮助我的希望，但是十年之后，当我们设计第一台 Mac 电脑时，这些全部可以应用上了；我们把这些全部应用到了 Mac 中，它是第一台拥有漂亮印刷字体的电脑，如果我在大学从来没有学习到这一个课程，Mac 也许也从不会拥有多种字型或对称字体，如果 Windows 没复制了 Mac ，也许个人电脑也就不会拥有这一些，如果我从来没有辍学，我也许也就从不会学习书法课程，并且个人电脑也许就没有这么精彩的印刷字体给人们展示，当然，我们不可能预知未来并连接点点滴滴，但是十年之后，我们非常清晰的可以回忆过去的点点滴滴。
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 diference.
再说一遍，你无法连接未来的点点滴滴，你只能连接过去的，所以你要相信这一些冥冥之中会连接你的未来，你要相信一些事情：你的直觉，命运，生活，信仰，无论什么 - 因为相信这一些会连接你的道路，会给你信心跟随你的心，甚至有时会带你脱离寻常的道路，它会让所有的一切变得不同。
My second story is about the 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 tweenty, We worked hard and the ten years Apple had grown from just two of us in the garage into the two billion dollar company with over four thounsand employees, We just released finest the creation - the Macintosh a year earlier and I just turned thirty and then I got fired; how can you get fired from the company you started, well , as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me and then for the first year so things went well but then the visions of the future begun to diverage and eventually we had falling out when we did our board of director side with him and so I was thirty, I was out and very publicly out what I’ve been focused my entire adult life was gone and it was devastating.
我的第二个故事是关于爱情与损失，我很幸运，在我生活早年就找到了我所喜爱的事情，在我20岁的时候，沃兹和我在我父母的车库开始了 Apple 的研究，我们非常努力，十年之后，Apple 就在我们两个人在车库的研究中成长成为了 20 亿美元市值并拥有超过 4000 名员工的公司，我们只是发布了最好的创新产品 - Macintosh，在我快要30岁之前的一年，然后我被解雇了；你怎么会被你自己的公司解雇呢, 随着 Apple 的成长，我们招聘了一些我认为非常有才华的人跟我一起经营公司，在起初的一年里，一切都很好，但是之后，公司未来的远景开始产生了分歧，最终，我们撕破脸了，当我们争执时，我们的董事会选择站在了他那边，然后当我 30 岁时，我被赶出了公司，并且非常公开性的驱逐。我全部成年生活一直所关注的东西就这样消失了，这种打击是毁灭性的。
I really didn’t know what to do for a few monthes I felt that I have let the previous generation of untrepreneurs down, and I dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with DaviePaker and Bob Noise and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly, I was a very publicly failure and even thought about running the way from valley but something slowly begun to dump 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 the turned out and getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could’ve 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 in my life, during the next five years I started a company named Next, another company named Pixer and fell in love with a mazing women who would become my wife, Pixer went on to create the world-first computer animated feature film “Toy Story” and It’s now the most successful animation studio in the world, In the 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. I’m pretty sure none of these would’ve happend if i hadn’t been fired from Apple, it was awful tasting medicine but i guess the patient needed, sometimes life, sometimes life’s gonna hit your head with a brick, dont lose faith, I’m convinced the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did you’ve got to find what you love and that it is true for work as it is for your lovers, your work is gonna fill large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do: “what you believe is a great work” and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. if you haven’t found yet keeping looking and don’t settle, as with all matters of the heart you will know when you find it and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as years roll on so keeping looking, and don’t settle.
My third story is about Death, when I was 17 I read a quote that when something like if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you will most certainly be right, It made an impression on me and since then for the past 33 years, I looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “if today were the last day of my life what I wanna do, what i’m about to do today”, and whenever the answer has been no for too many days in the row, I know i need to change something, Remembering that all will be dead soon it’s the most important tool i’ve ever encountered to help me make a big choices in life, because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all feel of embarrassment of failure these things just fall a way in the face of death, living only what it’s truly important, Remembering you’re going to dead it’s the best way i know to avoid the trouble of thinking you have something to lose, you’re already naked there’s no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago, i was diagnosed a cancer, I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed the tumor on my pancreas I didn’t even know what pancreas was, the doctors told me this was almost certainly type of cancer that it’s incureble and that i should’ve expected to live no longer than 3 to 6 monthes, my doctor advised me to go home and get my fares in orders which’s doctor’s code for prepare to dead，it means to try and tell your kids everything, you thought you would’ve next ten years to tell them and just a few monthes, it means to make sure everything is bottomed up so that would be as easier 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 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 doctor started crying because it turned out to be very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery, i had the surgery and thankfully i’m fine now.
This was the closest i’ve been facing death, and i hope it’s the closest i’ll get for a few more decades, having lived trough it, i can now say this to you with a bit more certainty when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept, no one wants to dead even people who wanna go to haven, don’t wanna dead to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share, no one’s ever escaped it and that is as it should be because death is very likely an 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 to long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away, sorry to be so dramatic but it’s quiet true your time is limited, so don’t waste it living somone 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 other’s 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 is was young there was a mazing publication called Whole Earth Catalog which was one of the bibles of my generation, it was created by a fellow named Steward Brand not far from here in Menlo Park and he brought 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, Steward and his team put out serveral issues of the Whole Earth Catalog and then when it had run its course they put out the final issue, it was in mid-1970s and i was your age, on the back cover of the 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 with the words “stay hungry stay foolish” it was their fare-well message as they signed off “stay hungry stay foolish” and i have always wished that for myself, and now as you graduate to begin a new i wish that for you “stay hungry stay foolish” thank you all very much.