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这是苹果创始人史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）于2005年6月12日在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的讲话。几年前，当我第一次读到这篇文章时就被深深的震撼了。我把整个文章翻译了一遍。时至今日，这篇文章仍然激励着我，去追随自己内心的想法，去做自己真正热爱的事。

这篇文章里的名句“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”很难翻译。“Hungry、Foolish”仅从字面上理解是“饥饿、愚蠢”的意思。但我把这句话译成“保持渴望。固执愚见。”这里的Hungry，我理解是年轻人对新事物的渴望与好奇，虽然穷困饥苦却渴求新知。就像史蒂夫·乔布斯年轻时一样，条件艰苦甚至真饿肚子却到处去学自己真正感兴趣的东西。这里的Foolish，我理解是指年轻人的年少轻狂，不精于世故，出生牛犊不怕虎的一股蛮劲，蠢劲。在老于世故的人看来，这当然是愚蠢。但正是这种不知天高地厚，不懂人情世故的固执愚见，才让年轻人能开创与前人不同的事业。

《一定要找到你热爱的》

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

我很荣幸能在今天与你们一起参加一个世界上最优秀的大学的毕业典礼。我从来没有从大学毕业。说实话，今天是我最离大学毕业最近的一次。今天，我想给你们讲我生活中的三个故事。就是这样。没什么大不了的。只是三个故事。

第一个故事是关于把我生活中过去的点点滴滴联系起来。

在过了最初的六个月后，我便从Reed学院辍学了。但是，在我真正离开那里前，我又呆了大约18个月。我为什么辍学呢？

这一切在我出生前就开始了。我的亲生母亲是一个年轻的未婚大学生。她决定把我送给别人收养。她坚持认为，我应该被有大学学历的人收养。所以，一切本来都已经安排好了，我将会被一个律师和他的妻子收养。但是当我出生以后，律师夫妇在最后一分钟决定他们真正想要的是一个女孩。所以，我的养父母，本来是在等候的名单上的。他们在半夜接到了一个电话，“我们有一个意料之外的男婴。你们想要他吗？”他们回答说：“当然。”我的亲生母亲后来发现我的养母从来没有从大学毕业，而我的养父高中都没有毕业。她拒绝在最终的领养文件上签字。过了几个月后，我的养父母向她保证我将来会上大学后，她才同意了。

17年后，我确实上大学了。但是我天真的选择了一个几乎和斯坦福一样昂贵的学院。我工薪阶层的父母的所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上。六个月后，我看不到这有任何价值。我不知道我的一生想要做什么。我不知道大学如何能帮我找到这一问题的答案。而且我在这里花费着我父母一生所有的积蓄。所以，我决定辍学，而且相信所有的这一切都会解决的。在当时，这个决定是非常令人害怕的。但是，回过头来看，这是我做过的最好的决定之一。在我辍学的那一刻，我可以不再去上我不感兴趣的课程，而去上那些看起来有趣的课程。

这并不浪漫。我没有宿舍，所以我睡在了朋友房间的地板上。我回收可乐瓶，用得到的5美分买吃的。我会在每星期天晚上步行7英里穿过城市到Hare Krishna寺庙去好好吃一顿。我喜欢那的饭。我凭着好奇心与直觉所遇到的一切，很大一部分在后来被证明是无比珍贵的。让我给你们举一个例子：

那时，Reed学院提供了当时可能是全国最好的书法课程。在校园里，每一个海报，每一个抽屉上的标签都是优美的手写字。因为我辍学了，不用再去上正常的课程，我决定上书法课，去学学如何写书法。我学会了serif和sanserif字体，学会了改变不同字母组合间的间隔，知道了是什么使字体变得优美。这一切都很优美，有历史感，具有科学无法获得的艺术的精巧。我发现这一切令人着迷。

对书法的学习看起来没有任何机会在我的一生中得到实际的应用。但是，10年后，当我们设计第一台Macintosh电脑时，这一切就又重现了。我们把字体的设计都放入了Mac，第一个有着优美字体的电脑。如果我没有在学校学书法课程，Mac就不可能有多种字体或者按适当比例间隔的字体。因为Windows只是照搬了Mac，有可能没有任何个人电脑会有这样的字体。如果我没有辍学，我就不会选那个书法课程，个人电脑就有可能没有今天这样优美的字体。当然，当我在大学时，把我当时的一点一滴串起来并不能预测到我后来的结果。但是，当10年后再回头看，这一切非常，非常清楚。

当然，你不能把事情联系在一起而预测未来。你只能回过头来再把它们联系起来。所以，你一定要相信那些点点滴滴在将来一定会以某种形式联系起来。你一定要相信一些事情— 你的直觉、命运、生命、因缘，无论是什么。这一方法从没有让我失望过。它对我的生活至关重要。

我的第二个故事是有关热爱与失去。

我很幸运，在生命中的最初阶段就找到了自己热爱做的事情。在我20岁的时候，Woz和我在我父母的车库里创建了苹果公司。我们非常努力。10年内，苹果从一个只有我们两个人的车库公司成长到20亿美金，有4000员工的公司。当时我刚刚满30岁，就在一年前，我们发布了我们最杰出的创造—Macintosh。然后，我被解雇了。你怎么能被你自己创立的公司解雇呢？哎，当苹果公司逐渐发展，我们雇了一个我认为非常有才华的人来和我一起运作公司。第一年，都还不错。但是，随后我们对未来的想法就开始有了分歧。最终我们闹翻了。当我们闹翻的时候，董事会站在了他的一边。结果是，我在30岁的时候被踢出了公司，而且是以尽人皆知的方式被踢出。我成年以来整个生活的中心没有了，这是毁灭性的。

有几个月的时间，我真的不知道做什么好。我觉得我辜负了把接力棒传递给我的上一代的创业者。我找到David Packard和Bob Noyce并向他们道歉，为我把事情搞得如此之糟道歉。我是一个众所周知的失败。我甚至想到从硅谷逃走。但是慢慢的我才开始意识到 — 我仍旧热爱我所作的事情。在苹果所发生的事情丝毫没有改变这一点。我被拒绝了，但是，我仍旧爱着。所以，我决定重新开始。

在那时我并没有认识到，但是实际上，被苹果解雇是对我来说最好的事情。成功所带来的沉重感被重新开始，对一切都不确定的轻松感所代替。这一切解放了我，让我进入了一生中最有创造性的一段时间。

之后的5年，我创办了一家叫NeXT的公司和另外一家叫Pixar的公司，还爱上了一个非常好的女人，后来她成为了我的妻子。Pixar创造了世界上第一部电脑动画电影，玩具总动员。现在，Pixar是世界上最成功的动画工作室。在经历了种种起伏后苹果买下了NeXT。我重返了苹果。我们在NeXT发展的技术是苹果目前复兴的核心。Laurene和我有一个美好的家庭。

我相当确信，如果我没被苹果解雇，这一切之中的任何事情都不会发生。这是一计苦药，但是我想我这个病人需要它。有时候，生活象用板儿砖拍头一样打击你。别失去信心。我深信当时唯一让我支持下去的原因就是我热爱我所作的一切。你一定要找到你所热爱的。这对你的事业是这样，对你的爱人也是如此。你的事业将会占据你生活的很大一部分，你真正得到满足的唯一途径就是去做你坚信是伟大的事业。而做伟大的事业的唯一途径就是热爱你所作的一切。如果你还没有找到，继续找。不要妥协。就像其他一切需要用心灵去感受的事物，当你找到的时候，你会知道的。就象任何美满的伴侣关系，随着时间的推移，事情会变得更美好。所以，继续找吧，直到你找到。不要妥协。

我的第三个故事是有关死亡的。

在我17岁的时候，我读到一段话，大概是“如果你按照生活的每一天都好象是你生命的最后一天那样活着，总有一天你会确信你的方向是对的。”这句话给我留下了深刻的印象，从那以后，在之后的33年里，我每天早晨都会对着镜子问自己“如果今天是我生命的最后一天，我还会去做我今天将要做的事情吗？”而每当连续几天我的回答总是“不”时，我知道我需要做些改变。

记住很快我将离开人世，这是帮助我做重大决定的最重要的工具。因为几乎任何事情 — 所有外界的期望，所有的自尊，所有对失败或丢脸的恐惧 — 在死亡面前都会烟消云散，只剩下那些真正重要的东西。记住你会死去，这是我所知的避免陷入患得患失的陷阱的最好的方式。你已经赤条条无牵挂。你没有任何原因不去追随你的内心。

一年前我被诊断为癌症。早晨7点半我做了扫描。扫描清楚的显示在我的胰脏上有一个肿瘤。我都不知道胰脏是什么。医生们告诉我几乎可以肯定这类癌症是无法治愈的。我应该不会活过3到6个月。我的医生建议我回家把后事准备好，这也是医生对准备去死的说法。也就是在几个月的时间里对你的孩子说所有的事情，那些你曾经认为你会有下一个10年的时间去说的一切。也就是说确保一切安顿停当，让你的家人尽可能的从容一些。也就是你的告别。

我带着这一诊断结果生活了一整天。晚上，我做了活组织检测。他们把内窥镜插下我的喉咙，穿过我的胃，进入肠子，用一根针穿入我的胰脏从肿瘤上提取一些细胞。我被麻醉了。但是我的妻子在现场。她告诉我，当他们在显微镜下看过之后，医生们喊叫起来。因为这原来是一种极为罕见形式的胰腺癌，可以通过手术治愈。我做了手术，现在我已经没事了。

这是我面临死亡最近的一次。我希望这也是我今后几十年内最近的一次。经历过这一切，现在我可以更确信的对你说这一切，死亡不仅仅是一个有用但抽象的概念。

没人希望死。即使是想进入天堂的人们也不想通过死亡进入那里。但是，死亡是我们共同的目的地。没有人能逃脱。死亡就是这样。因为死亡也许是生命中最好的发明。它是生命改变的媒介。它清理老的，给新的让出路。现在，你们就是新的。但是，不久，你们会慢慢变成老的，然后被清理掉。原谅我这种非常直白的说法，但是，这是事实。

你的时间是有限的。所以不要浪费你自己的时间去过别人的生活。不要被教条所禁锢，被动接受别人思想的结果。不要让他人意见的噪音盖过你自己内心的声音。最重要的是，有勇气去追随你的内心与直觉。你的内心和直觉早已洞察了你真正想做的。其他的一切都不重要。

当我年轻的时候，有一本优秀的刊物叫The Whole Earth Catalog, 是我们那一代的圣经之一。一个叫Stewart Branch的人在离这不远的Menlo Park用他诗人般的灵感创造了这一刊物。当时是60年代末，还没有个人电脑和桌面出版系统。所以，这本刊物全部是用打字机，剪刀和宝利来相机做出来的。这好像是纸上的Google,但在Google出现前35年：它是理想主义的，充满了简洁的工具与伟大的想法。

Stewart和他的团队出版了几期The Whole Earth Catalog。他们最终完成了自己的使命，出了最后一期刊物，时间是70年代中期。当时我正处在你们的年纪。在刊物封底，是一幅清晨乡间路的照片。如果你乐于冒险搭便车旅行就会看到这一种景象。在照片下面有一句话“保持渴望。固执愚见。”(“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”)这是他们的告别语。保持渴望。固执愚见。我一直这样勉励我自己。现在，当你们毕业，有新的开始，我同样勉励你们。

保持渴望。固执愚见。（又译：求知若饥，虚心若愚。）

多谢你们！

———————原文如下——————————————–

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

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, it’s 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 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.

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.

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