The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen 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 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 go to college.
第一个故事是关于人生中点点滴滴如何串联起来（有人翻译成人生的因果关联）。
我在里德学院只读了六个月就退学了，但之后我又作为旁听生待了大约十八个月才真正离开。那么我为什么要退学？
这要从我出生前说起。我的生母是一位年轻的未婚研究生，她决定把我送人收养。她强烈认为我应该被大学毕业生收养，所以一切都已经安排好了，我一出生就会被一位律师和他的妻子收养。但当我真的出生时，他们在最后一刻决定他们真正想要一个女孩。所以我在等待名单上的养父母在半夜接到电话：“我们有一个意外的男婴；你们想要他吗？”他们说：“当然。”我的生母后来发现我的养母从未大学毕业，我的养父高中都没毕业。她拒绝签署最终的收养文件。几个月后，当我的养父母承诺我会上大学时，她才让步。
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 far more interesting.
十七年后，我确实上了大学。但我天真地选择了一所几乎和斯坦福一样贵的大学，我工薪阶层的父母的所有积蓄都花在了我的大学学费上。六个月后，我看不到其中的价值。我不知道我想用我的一生做什么，也不知道大学将如何帮助我找到答案。而我在这里花光了我父母毕生的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并相信一切都会好起来的。当时这很可怕，但回想起来，这是我做过的最好的决定之一。从退学的那一刻起，我可以停止上那些我不感兴趣的必修课，开始旁听那些看起来更有趣的课。
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:
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 sans-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.
这一切并不浪漫。我没有宿舍，所以我睡在朋友房间的地板上。我退可乐瓶换五分钱押金来买吃的，每个星期天晚上我会走七英里穿过城镇，只是为了在哈瑞·克里希那神庙吃一顿像样的饭。我喜欢这样。我凭着好奇心和直觉所经历的很多事情，后来被证明是无价之宝。让我给你们一个例子：
当时的里德学院提供了可能是全国最好的书法课程。校园里每张海报、每个抽屉上的标签都是漂亮的手写字体。因为我退学了，不必上常规课程，所以我决定去上书法课，学习怎么写。我学习了衬线字体和无衬线字体，学习如何调整不同字母组合之间的间距，学习是什么让优秀的排版变得伟大。它很美，具有历史感，在艺术上有一种科学无法捕捉的微妙，我觉得它很迷人。
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 backward ten years later.
这些在我的生活中没有任何实际应用的希望。但十年后，当我们在设计第一台麦金塔电脑时，这一切都回到了我的脑海。我们把所有这些都设计进了Mac。那是第一台拥有漂亮字体的电脑。如果我从未在大学旁听过那门课，Mac就不会有多种字体和按比例间距的字体。而且由于Windows只是模仿了Mac，可能所有个人电脑都不会有这些字体。如果我从未退学，我就不会旁听那门书法课，个人电脑可能就不会有现在这样美妙的字体。当然，我在大学时不可能预见到这些点滴如何联系起来。但十年后回头看，这一切都变得非常非常清晰。
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. 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，你无法预知点滴如何联系；唯有回头看时才能明白。所以你必须相信，这些点滴会在你的未来以某种方式串联起来。你必须相信某些东西——你的直觉、命运、生命、因果，什么都行——因为相信这些点滴会在未来连接起来，会给你信心去追随自己的心，即使它会带你离开常规的道路，而那将一切变得不同。
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 ten years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 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.
我的第二个故事是关于爱与失去。
我很幸运——我在很年轻的时候就找到了自己热爱的事业。我在20岁时和沃兹在我父母的车库里创立了苹果。我们努力工作，十年间苹果从只有我们两人的车库公司成长为拥有4000多名员工、价值20亿美元的公司。我们刚刚在前一年发布了我们最精美的作品——麦金塔电脑，而我刚刚30岁。然后我被解雇了。你怎么能被你自己创立的公司解雇？嗯，随着苹果的发展，我们雇佣了一个我认为很有才华的人来和我一起管理公司，头一年左右事情进展顺利。但后来我们对未来的愿景开始产生分歧，最终我们闹翻了。当我们闹翻时，董事会站在了他那边。所以在30岁时，我出局了。而且是公开出局。我整个成年生活的重心没了，这简直是毁灭性的。
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.
有几个月我真的不知道该怎么办。我觉得我让上一代企业家失望了——我搞砸了传给我的接力棒。我见了戴维·帕卡德和鲍勃·诺伊斯，试图为我搞砸得如此严重而道歉。我是一个众所周知的失败者，我甚至想过逃离硅谷。但慢慢地我开始明白——我仍然热爱我所做的事情。苹果发生的事件一点也没有改变这一点。我被拒绝了，但我仍然热爱它。所以我决定重新开始。
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 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, 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.
我当时没有意识到，但事实证明，被苹果解雇是可能发生在我身上的最好的事情。成功的沉重被重新作为一个初学者的轻松所取代，对一切都不那么确定。这让我自由地进入了我生命中最具创造力的时期之一。
在接下来的五年里，我创办了一家名为NeXT的公司，另一家名为皮克斯的公司，并且爱上了一位了不起的女人，她后来成为了我的妻子。皮克斯接着创作了世界上第一部电脑动画长片《玩具总动员》，现在是世界上最成功的动画工作室。在一次非凡的转折中，苹果收购了NeXT，我回到了苹果，而我们在NeXT开发的技术成为了苹果当前复兴的核心。而劳伦和我组建了一个美好的家庭。
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 go on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
我很确定，如果我没有被苹果解雇，这一切都不会发生。这药很苦，但我想病人需要它。有时候，生活会用砖头砸你的头。不要失去信念。我深信让我坚持下去的唯一原因是我热爱我所做的事情。你必须找到你所爱的东西。这适用于你的工作，也适用于你的爱人。你的工作将占据你生活的一大部分，而真正感到满足的唯一方法就是去做你认为是伟大的工作。而做出伟大工作的唯一方法就是热爱你所做的事情。如果你还没找到，继续寻找。不要将就。就像所有关乎内心的事情一样，当你找到时，你就会知道。而且，就像任何伟大的关系一样，随着岁月的流逝，它会变得越来越好。所以继续寻找，不要将就。
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 were 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.
我的第三个故事是关于死亡。
当我17岁时，我读到一句话，大意是：“如果你把每一天都当作生命中的最后一天来活，总有一天你会确定你是对的。” 这句话给我留下了深刻印象，从那时起，在过去的33年里，我每天早上都会看着镜子问自己：“如果今天是我生命中的最后一天，我会想做我今天要做的事情吗？” 每当答案连续很多天都是“不”的时候，我知道我需要改变一些东西。
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.
记住我很快就要死了，是我遇到过的帮助我做出人生重大选择的最重要的工具。因为几乎所有一切——所有外界的期望、所有的骄傲、所有对尴尬或失败的恐惧——在死亡面前都会消失，只留下真正重要的东西。记住你将要死去，是我知道的避免陷入患得患失陷阱的最好方法。你已经一无所有。没有理由不追随你的内心。
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.
大约一年前，我被诊断出患有癌症。我在早上7:30做了扫描，结果清楚地显示我的胰腺上有一个肿瘤。我甚至不知道胰腺是什么。医生告诉我，这几乎肯定是一种无法治愈的癌症，我预计活不过三到六个月。我的医生建议我回家把事情安排好，这是医生对“准备死亡”的委婉说法。这意味着要试着在几个月内告诉你的孩子们你以为未来10年要告诉他们的一切。这意味着确保一切安排妥当，让你的家人尽可能轻松。这意味着说再见。
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.
我一整天都活在这个诊断里。那天晚上晚些时候，我做了一次活检，他们把内窥镜插进我的喉咙，穿过我的胃进入肠道，用针扎进我的胰腺，从肿瘤中取出了一些细胞。我被麻醉了，但当时在场的我的妻子告诉我，当他们在显微镜下观察细胞时，医生们开始哭了，因为结果证明这是一种非常罕见的可以通过手术治愈的胰腺癌。我做了手术，谢天谢地，我现在很好。
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 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.
这是我离面对死亡最近的一次，我希望这也是未来几十年里我离死亡最近的一次。经历了这一切后，我现在可以更肯定地对你们说这句话，而不是当死亡只是一个有用但纯粹的概念时：
没有人想死。即使想上天堂的人也不想为此而死。然而，死亡是我们所有人共同的终点。没有人能逃脱它。而理应如此，因为死亡很可能是生命最伟大的发明。它是生命变化的推动者。它清除旧的，为新的让路。现在新的就是你们，但不久之后的某一天，你们会逐渐变成旧的，被清除。很抱歉说得这么戏剧性，但这是非常真实的。
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.
你们的时间有限，所以不要浪费时间活在别人的生活里。不要被教条束缚——那是活在别人思考的结果里。不要让别人的意见淹没了你自己内心的声音。最重要的是，要有勇气追随你的心和直觉。它们早已知道你真正想成为什么样的人。其他一切都是次要的。
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 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.
我年轻时，有一本很棒的出版物叫《全球概览》，它是我们那一代人的圣经之一……它有点像平装版的谷歌，比谷歌早了35年。它充满理想主义，充满了精巧的工具和伟大的理念。
斯图尔特和他的团队出版了《全球概览》的几期，当它完成使命后，他们出版了最后一期。那是20世纪70年代中期，我和你们现在一样大。他们最后一期的封底是一张清晨乡间公路的照片，那种如果你有冒险精神可能会发现自己搭便车的路。照片下面写着：“**求知若饥，虚心若愚。**” 这是他们停刊时的告别语。求知若饥，虚心若愚。我一直以此自许。现在，在你们毕业重新开始之际，我把它送给你们。
求知若饥，虚心若愚。
非常感谢大家。