[分享] You Are Not Special 令人感動的畢業致詞
There was Steve Jobs’ message to Stanford University graduates –
“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”
Conan O’Brien’s words of wisdom to fresh-faced Harvard grads –
“Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally.”
And then there’s high-school teacher David McCullough Jr’s now infamous
parting words: “You are not special.”
演講影片
http://youtu.be/_lfxYhtf8o4
**** Transcript *****
Dr. Wong, Dr. Keough, Mrs. Novogroski, Ms. Curran, members of the board
of education, family and friends of the graduates, ladies and gentlemen
of the Wellesley High School class of 2012, for the privilege of speaking
to you this afternoon, I am honored and grateful. Thank you.
So here we are… commencement… life's great forward-looking ceremony.
(And don't say, "What about weddings?" Weddings are one-sided and
insufficiently effective. Weddings are bride-centric pageantry.
Other than conceding to a list of unreasonable demands, the groom just
stands there. No stately, hey-everybody-look-at-me procession. No
being given away. No identity-changing pronouncement. And can you
imagine a television show dedicated to watching guys try on tuxedos?
Their fathers sitting there misty-eyed with joy and disbelief, their
brothers lurking in the corner muttering with envy. Left to men,
weddings would be, after limits-testing procrastination, spontaneous,
almost inadvertent… during halftime… on the way to the refrigerator.
And then there's the frequency of failure: statistics tell us half of
you will get divorced. A winning percentage like that'll get you last
place in the American League East. The Baltimore Orioles do better
than weddings.)
But this ceremony… commencement… a commencement works every time.
From this day forward… truly… in sickness and in health, through
financial fiascos, through midlife crises and passably attractive sales
reps at trade shows in Cincinnati, through diminishing tolerance for
annoyingness, through every difference, irreconcilable and otherwise,
you will stay forever graduated from high school, you and your diploma
as one, 'til death do you part.
No, commencement is life's great ceremonial beginning, with its own
attendant and highly appropriate symbolism. Fitting, for example, for
this auspicious rite of passage, is where we find ourselves this afternoon,
the venue. Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn't touch
them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing
field. That matters. That says something. And your ceremonial costume…
shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or
short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box
assassin, each of you is dressed, you'll notice, exactly the same. And
your diploma… but for your name, exactly the same.
All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.
You are not special. You are not exceptional.
Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh
grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple
dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how
often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you're
nothing special.
Yes, you've been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped.
Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed
you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored
you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled
you and encouraged you again. You've been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and
implored. You've been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie.
Yes, you have. And, certainly, we've been to your games, your plays, your
recitals, your science fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into
a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe
you've even had your picture in the Townsman! [Editor's upgrade: Or The
Swellesley Report!] And now you've conquered high school… and,
indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this
fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building…
But do not get the idea you're anything special. Because you're not.
The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher
can't ignore. Newton, Natick, Nee… I am allowed to say Needham, yes?
…that has to be two thousand high school graduates right there, give or
take, and that's just the neighborhood Ns. Across the country no fewer
than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000
high schools. That's 37,000 valedictorians… 37,000 class presidents…
92,000 harmonizing altos… 340,000 swaggering jocks… 2,185,967 pairs of
Uggs. But why limit ourselves to high school? After all, you're leaving
it. So think about this: even if you're one in a million, on a planet of
6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you.
Imagine standing somewhere over there on Washington Street on Marathon
Monday and watching sixty-eight hundred yous go running by.
And consider for a moment the bigger picture: your planet, I'll
remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your solar
system is not the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the
center of the universe. In fact, astrophysicists assure us the
universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it. Neither
can Donald Trump… which someone should tell him…although that hair is
quite a phenomenon.
"But, Dave," you cry, "Walt Whitman tells me I'm my own version of
perfection! Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!" And I don't
disagree. So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion
sparks of Zeus. You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If
everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not
so subtle Darwinian competition with one another-which springs, I think, from
our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality - we
have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more
than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point - and we're
happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that's the
quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece,
something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage
ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how
you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or
grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it's "So what does this get me?" As
a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical
clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of
Guatemalans. It's an epidemic - and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley
High is immune… one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High
School… where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the
midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement. And I hope you
caught me when I said "one of the best." I said "one of the best" so we can
feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction,
however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever
they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition.
But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best.
You're it or you're not.
If you've learned anything in your years here I hope it's that education
should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning.
You've learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the
chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream… just an fyi)
I also hope you've learned enough to recognize how little you
know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is
just the beginning. It's where you go from here that matters.
As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds, I urge you to do
whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its
importance. Don't bother with work you don't believe in any more than you
would a spouse you're not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the
wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison. Resist the easy comforts of
complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of
self-satisfaction. Be worthy of your advantages. And read… read all the
time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a
nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and
demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for
yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might.
And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock
subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are commencements
there are cessations, and you'll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony
attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the afternoon.
The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an
achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you're a nice
person or mommy ordered it from the caterer. You'll note the founding
fathers took pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness-quite an active verb, "pursuit"-which leaves, I should
think, little time for lying around watching parrots rollerskate on Youtube.
The first President Roosevelt, the old rough rider, advocated the strenuous
life. Mr. Thoreau wanted to drive life into a corner, to live deep and suck
out all the marrow. The poet Mary Oliver tells us to row, row into the swirl
and roil. Locally, someone… I forget who… from time to time encourages
young scholars to carpe the heck out of the diem. The point is the same: get
busy, have at it. Don't wait for inspiration or passion to find you. Get
up, get out, explore, find it yourself, and grab hold with both hands. (Now,
before you dash off and get your YOLO tattoo, let me point out the illogic of
that trendy little expression-because you can and should live not merely
once, but every day of your life. Rather than You Only Live Once, it should
be You Live Only Once… but because YLOO doesn't have the same ring, we shrug
and decide it doesn't matter.)
None of this day-seizing, though, this YLOOing, should be interpreted as
license for self-indulgence. Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life
is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct. It's what happens when you're
thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain not to plant your
flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb
it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be
in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being
worldly. Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the
satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the
rest of the 6.8 billion-and those who will follow them. And then you too
will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that
selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of
life, then, come only with the recognition that you're not special.
Because everyone is.
Congratulations. Good luck. Make for yourselves, please, for your sake and
for ours, extraordinary lives.
--
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◆ From: 123.195.228.212
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06/15 21:44, , 1F
06/15 21:44, 1F
謝謝 我看了很有感覺 所以想分享 :)
※ 編輯: ccnoire 來自: 123.195.228.212 (06/15 23:21)
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06/16 00:23, , 2F
06/16 00:23, 2F