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 retuned 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 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 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.

 

 

中文翻译:

谢谢。我很荣幸在今天能和你们，来自世界上最好大学之一的毕业生们，一起参加毕业典礼。老实说，我从没从大学毕业，这次是离大学毕业最近的一次。

    今天我想和大家谈谈来自我生活中的三个故事。就这么简单，没什么大不了的，只是三个故事。第一个故事关于串连生命中的点滴。

 

    我在Reed学院呆了6个月就退学了，但在我真正离开前，我又在学校里逛了18个月。那么我为什么辍学呢？这该从我出生前说起。我的生母是个年轻、未婚的大学毕业生，她决定让别人领养我。她强烈觉得我应该被上过大学的人领养。于是，一对律师夫妇说好了在我出生时就领养我，然而，当我出生时，他们最后一妙决定很想要一个女孩。所以，在领养候选人名单中的我的养父母，在深夜接到一个询问电话：“很意外，我们得到一个男婴，你们想要吗？” 他们回答：“当然。” 我的生母后来发现，我的妈妈没有大学毕业，我的爸爸连高中都没毕业。她拒绝签署最后的领养协议。几个月后，我父母承诺让我上大学，她才态度软化。

    这就是我生命的开端。17年后，我确实上了大学，但我幼稚得选了一所学费和一样昂贵的学院，我的蓝领阶层父母的所有积蓄被花在了我的学费上。6个月后，我看不到这些花费的价值。我不知道将来做什么，不知道大学怎样帮我指点迷津，我却在这里花费父母为我存了一辈子的钱。所以我决定辍学，并且相信没有做错。在那时候真是胆战心惊，但现在回过头想想，这是我做过的最好的决定之一。在我辍学的那一刻，我可以停止修读那些不敢兴趣的课程，而开始旁听那些有意思得多的课程。

    事情并不总是美好的。我没有宿舍，所以睡在朋友房间的地板上；我为了买食物，回收定金为5分钱一个的可乐瓶；我每周日走七英里路穿过城镇，就为了能在Hare Krishna庙改善一周的伙食。我喜欢这种生活方式。遵循自己的好奇心和本能而无意中做的事情在后来证明是无价的。让我给你们一个例子。

    当时的Reed学院可能提供这个国家最好的书法指导。校园里的每一份海报、在抽屉上的每一个标签都是漂亮的手写体。因为我已经退学，就没有必要去修读通常的课程了，我决定上书法课去学习怎么做到这些。我学习“serif”和"sans-serif"两种字样，学习如何改变不同字母组合间的间距大小，学习怎么把字写得好看。那种漂亮、历史感和艺术的精妙是科学无法捕捉的，我发现我完全被吸引了。

    一开始，实在看不出这些东西在我生活中有实际应用的可能。但十年以后，当我们设计第一台苹果电脑时，它们都跑回来了，我们开始把它们设计进苹果电脑，这是第一台有漂亮字体的电脑。如果我从没在大学旁听那门课程，苹果机就不会有多种的字样，或是比例间距的字体；而且由于微软视窗系统是拷贝苹果机创意的，那么似乎个人电脑都不会有这些设计了。

    如果我从没有退学，我就永远不会旁听那门书法课程，个人电脑可能就不会有像现在这样令人愉悦的字样。

 

    我第二个故事是关于热爱和失去。我很幸运，我在很年轻的时候就发现我喜欢做的事情。在我20岁的时候，Woz和我在我爸妈的花园里开始设计苹果电脑。我们努力工作，在10年后，苹果从只有花园里的两个人，成长为拥有雇员超过4000，价值为20亿大公司。在那之前的一年，我们刚发布了我们最好的创意，Macintosh超作系统，然后我刚过30就被解雇了。你怎么能被自己创立的公司解雇呢？是啊，当苹果发展过程中，我们雇佣了一些我认为非常具有才华，能和我一起运行公司的人。在第一年左右，事情进展得很好。但是后来我们对于将来的看法有了分歧，最终我们发生冲突。当我们争吵时，我们的董事会站在了他一边，所以在我30岁的时候，我离开了苹果，而且非常公开地离开。我整个成年时期关注的重心就这样离我而去，这个打击是毁灭性的。我真的不知道在接下来的几个月该做什么。我觉得自己让上一代的企业家失望透顶，我弄丢了他们传给我的指挥棒。我与David Packard和Bob Noyce碰面，试图为自己彻彻底底的失败道歉。我是个众人皆知的失败者，我甚至想逃离硅谷。但有什么东西开始慢慢地让我清醒过来。我依旧热爱我做的事情，在苹果公司发生的变故没有让此改变。我被拒绝了，但我仍然热爱这份事业。所以我决定从头再来。

    在那时候我没有看出来，但最后证明被苹果解雇是发生在我身上最好的一件事情。作为失败者的沉重感，被再次成为一名起步者的轻松感替代了，但我不再对任何事情都那么的确定。它让我恢复自由进入我生命中最富有创造力的阶段之一。再过去的5年，我创立了一家名为NeXT的公司，以及另一家公司Pixar，并且与一位出色的女士陷入爱河，她后来成为我的妻子。Pixar后来创作了世界上第一步计算机动画长片 “玩具总动员”，现在它是世界上最成功的动画工作室。

    在一系列的运转后，苹果购买了NeXT，我又回到了苹果，在NeXT开发的技术现在是苹果现代复兴的核心部分，而我和Lorene在一起建立了一个幸福的家庭。

    我很确定的是，如果我没有被苹果解雇的话，这些都不会发生。这是很难喝的药，但我想病人需要它。有时候生活会给你当头一棒，但千万不要失去信心。

    我确信，让我不断前进的唯一动力就是对自己工作的热爱。你们必须发现你们热爱的东西，如同对于你们的爱人一样，对于工作也是如此。你们的工作将占据你们大部分的生活，得到真正满意的方法就是做你自己认为伟大的工作，做伟大工作的唯一方法是热爱你做的工作。如果你还没有发现，继续寻找，不要停下来。与所有的心事一样，当你发现自己最喜欢的事业的时候，你会知道的。就像任何真诚的关系，随着时间的流逝，只会越来越紧密。所以要继续寻找，不要停下来。

 

    我的第三个故事是关于死亡。当我17岁时，我读到的一句引述大概是这么说的，“如果你把每一天都当作最后一天过，有一天你会发现你是确切无疑得正确的。” 这让我记忆犹新。而就从那时候起，在过去的33年间，我每天早上对着镜子问自己，“如果今天是我生命的最后一天，我还会去做今天打算做的事情吗？”无论何时，当连续几天的答案“不”的时候，我知道我需要改变一些东西。提醒自己快死了是我曾经遇见的，帮我做生命中重大抉择的最重要东西。

    因为，几乎所有的事情－－所有的外界期盼，荣誉，对于尴尬和失败的恐惧－－这些事情面对死亡的时候就会远离，留下唯一真正重要的东西。提醒自己即将死亡是我知道的最好办法，用来避开担心失去某些东西的陷阱。你已经“赤裸裸”了，没有理由不遵从内心的心愿。

    大概一年前，我被诊断出来癌症。我在早上7:30有一次扫描，结果清楚得显示我的胰脏上有一个肿瘤。那时候我甚至不知道胰脏是什么。医生告诉我，几乎肯定这是一种无法治愈的癌症，我应该不能活过3到6个月。我的医生建议我回家，把自己的私人事情安排好，这是医生说“准备好去死”的暗号。这意味着，得尝试在几个月内告诉孩子们你本想在将来的10年告诉他们的事情；这意味着，得安排好所有的事情，使你的家庭尽可能轻松些；这意味着说永别了。

    那种诊断伴随着我整整一天。后来那天的晚上，我有一个活体组织检查，他们把内窥镜插入我的喉咙，通过我的胃进入肠道，在我胰脏上插入一根针，从我的肿瘤上取出一些细胞。当时我用了麻醉剂，陪在一旁的妻子后来告诉我，医生在显微镜里看了细胞之后叫了起来，原来这是一种少见的可以通过外科手术治愈的恶性肿瘤。后来我做了手术，谢天谢地，我现在很好。

    这是我以前最接近死亡的一次，我希望这也是我以后的几十年最接近死亡的一次。度过这次死亡之旅后，相比于以前只知道死亡有用，但纯粹是思想概念时，我现在可以更自信地和你们说这些。没有人愿意死，甚至是想去天堂的人，也不想通过死亡达到他们的目的，然而，死亡是我们所有人共同的终点，没有人曾逃脱。也应该如此，因为死亡很可能是生命的最好发明。死亡是生命改变的代理；它能推陈出新。当今，“新人”就是你们。但某一天，不会离现在太久，你们将逐渐变老然后被清除。我为这种戏剧性感到抱歉，但这是真的。你们的时间是有限的，所以不要把时间浪费在过别人的生活上。不要被教条束缚，这意味着和别人思考的结果一起生活。不要让别人的喧嚣掩盖自己内心真正的声音。你们的内心和直觉已经知道你们想要变成什么样子，其余的都是次要的。

    当我年轻的时候，有一个精彩的出版物叫做“完整地球目录”，这是我们那代人的权威书本之一。这份杂志的作者是Stuart Brand，他就住在离这里不远的Menlo公园，他用诗一般的触动把这本杂志带到了世界。这是在60年代末，个人电脑和桌面出版还没有，所以他的杂志都通过打字机，剪刀，一次成影照相机来制作。这有点像平装本的Google，但比google的出现早了35年。它很理想主义，全文充斥着灵巧的工具和伟大的想法。Stuart和他的团队发布了几期“完整地球目录”，然后在完成使命之前，他们发布了最后的一期。这是在70年代中期，那时我和你们现在差不多大。在他们最后一期的封皮背面是一幅清晨乡间小路的照片，，就是那种爱冒险的人等在那儿搭便车的那种小路。照片下面写道: “好学若饥、谦卑若愚。”那是他们停刊前的告别辞。求知若渴，大智若愚。这是我一直想做到的。眼下正值诸位大学毕业、开始新生活之际，我同样愿大家:好学若饥、谦卑若愚。

 

    非常感谢大家！