亚马逊总裁Jeff Bezos在普林斯顿毕业典礼的演讲

 中文稿：由普林斯顿校友汪冠春翻译

亚马逊总裁Jeff Bezos在princeton大学毕业典礼的演讲
               
   在我还是一个孩子的时候，我的夏天总是在德州祖父母的农场中度过。我帮忙修理风车，为牛接种疫苗，也做其它家务。每天下午，我们都会看肥皂剧，尤其是《我们的岁月》。我的祖父母是一个房车俱乐部的成员，那是一群会开着Airstream拖挂型房车，结伴遍游美国和加拿大的人们。每隔几个夏天，我们也会参加到房车出游。我们把房车挂在祖父的小汽车后面，然后出发在由300余名Airstream探险者们组成的浩荡队伍中。
   我热爱并且敬重我的祖父母，也非常期盼这样的旅行。记得有一次，我当时十岁左右，我在车后方的长椅上翻滚着玩耍。祖父开着车，祖母坐在他旁边，一路上她都在吸地做些烟，我讨厌那烟味。
   那个年纪的我总会不失时机地做些计算和估算，耍耍小聪明。我会去估算里程数，预计物品花销等等这些没用的数字。。我听过一个有关吸烟的广告。我记不得细节了，但是广告大意是说，每吸一口香烟会减少几分钟的寿命，大概是两分钟。不管是几分钟，我当时决定为祖母做个算术。我估测了祖母每天要吸几支香烟，每支香烟要吸几口等等，然后心满意足地得出了一个合理的数字。接着，我把头伸到车前，拍了拍祖母的肩膀，然后自豪地宣称，“假设你是两分钟戏一口烟，那么你已经折寿9年了!”
   我清晰地记得接下来发生了什么，和我预想的完全不同。我原本期待祖母会赞赏我的小聪明和算术能力。“杰夫，你真聪明！你一定用了些更巧妙的方法来做估算，先算出一年有多少分钟，再做些除法。”但那并没有发生。相反，我的祖母突然放声大哭。我坐在后座上，不知所措。在祖母哭的时候，原先一直默默开车的祖父，把车停在了路边，走下车来，打开了我的车门，等着我跟他下车。我要挨批了吗?我的祖父是一个很有智慧而又很安静的人。他从来没有对我说过严厉的话，也许这会是第一次?还是他会让我回到车上跟祖母道歉?我以前从未遇到过这种状况，因而也无从知晓会有怎样的下文。我们在房车旁停下来。祖父注视着我，沉默片刻，然后语重心长地说：“杰夫，有一天你会明白，善良要比聪明来得更难。”
   今天我想对你们说的是，天赋和选择不同。聪明是一种天赋，而善良是一种选择。天赋得来很容易，毕竟它们与生俱来。而选择可能更难。如果不小心，你就会被自己的天赋所诱惑，如果真是如此，这往往会影响你做出选择的能力。
   在座各位都拥有许多天赋。我确信你们的天赋之一就是拥有精明能干的头脑。之所以如此确信，是因为申请普林斯顿的竞争十分激烈，如果你们没有在某方面展现出聪明才智，招生办是不会招你进来的。
   你们的聪明才智会很有用武之地，因为你们即将开始翱翔于那广阔天地中。我们人类，尽管跬步前行，却终终将创造神奇。我们会发明生产清洁能源的方法而且是大量的清洁能源，也能够一个原子一个原子地组装微型仪器，去穿透细胞壁，修复细胞。这个月，有一个异常而不可避免的事情发生了——人类终于合成了生命。在未来几年，我们不仅会合成生命，还可以随意根据需求来设计它。我相信你们甚至会看到人类开始理解自己的大脑，儒勒·凡尔纳，马克·吐温，伽利略，牛顿，那些渴望知识的先驱们应该都希望能生在今天吧。作为文明社会的成员，我们拥有众多天赋，就像坐在我面前的你们，每个个体都拥有许多独特的天赋。
   你们要如何运用这些天赋呢?你们会为自己的天赋感到骄傲，还是会为自己的选择感到骄傲?
   追随自己内心的热情
   16年前，我萌生了创办亚马逊的想法。我偶然了解得到互联网使用量正以每年2300%的速度增长，我从未看到或听说过任何增长如此快速的食物。创建涵盖百万书籍的网上书店的想法令我兴奋异常，因为这个线下世界里是根本无法存在的。那时我刚刚30岁，结婚一年。
   我告诉妻子MacKenzie想辞去工作，去做这件疯狂的事情而且很可能会失败的事，因为大部分创业公司都是如此，而且我不确定那之后会发生什么。MacKenzie，她也是普林斯顿大学毕业，今天就坐在第二排。告诉我，我应该放手一搏。在我还是一个男孩儿的时候，我是车库发明家。我曾用水泥填充的轮胎制作了一个自动关门器。用雨伞和锡纸制作太阳能灶，虽然不太好用。还有烤盘报警器，用来捉弄我的姐弟。我一直想做一个发明家，MacKenzie支持我追随内心的热情。
   我当时在纽约一家金融公司工作，同事是一群非常聪明的人，我有一个很杰出的老板，我对他很敬仰。我把我想开办一家在线卖书的公司的想法告诉了他。他带我去中央公园漫步了许久，认真地听我讲完，最后说：“这听起来真是个好主意，但是对那些目前没有好工作的人来说，这个主意会更适合。”
   这一逻辑让我觉得有些道理，他说服我在最后决定之前再仔细考虑48小时。从这个角度说，这个决定确实很艰难，但是最终，我还是决定要去拼一下。我知道自己不会为尝试过后的失败而遗憾，反而要是自己根本不去尝试，也许一辈子都会为此备受煎熬。在深思熟虑之后，我选择了那条风险相对大的道路，去追随我内心的热情。我为那个决定感到骄傲。
   明天，非常现实地说，你们就要开始独立书写自己人生故事。
   你们会如何运用自己的天赋?你们又会作出怎样的抉择?
   你们是会随波逐流，还是追随自己内心的热情?
   你们会墨守陈规，还是勇于创新?
   你们会选择安逸的生活，还是选择一个奉献与冒险的人生?
   你们会屈从于批评，还是会坚守信念?
   你们会为错误狡辩，还是会坦诚道歉?
   你们会因害怕拒绝而掩饰内心，还是会在面对爱情时勇往直前?
   你们想要波澜不惊，还是想要搏击风浪?
   当有困难时，你们会选择放弃，还是会义无反顾地前行?
   你们要做愤青，还是建设者?
   你们会为了展示自己的聪明而伤害别人，还是选择善良？
   我斗胆做一个预测：在你们80岁时，静静地追忆往昔时，对你自己一个人讲诉，你人生故事最私密的那个版本，最简明、最优意义的那段讲诉，会是你在人生中做出的一系列决定。最终还是，选择塑造人生。为你自己书写一个伟大的人生故事吧！
   谢谢，祝好运!

英文原稿

      As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially "Days of our Lives." My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we'd join the caravan. We'd hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather's car, and off we'd go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

    At that age, I'd take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I'd calculate our gas mileage -- figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I'd been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can't remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I'd come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, "At two minutes per puff, you've taken nine years off your life!"
    I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. "Jeff, you're so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division." That's not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."
   What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
    This is a group with many gifts. I'm sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I'm confident that's the case because admission is competitive and if there weren't some signs that you're clever, the dean of admission wouldn't have let you in.
   Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans -- plodding as we are -- will astonish ourselves. We'll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we'll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we've synthesized life. In the coming years, we'll not only synthesize it, but we'll engineer it to specifications. I believe you'll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton -- all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
   How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?
   I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles -- something that simply couldn't exist in the physical world -- was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I'd been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most startups don't, and I wasn't sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.
    I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, "That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job." That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I'm proud of that choice.
    Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life -- the life you author from scratch on your own -- begins.
    How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
    Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
    Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
    Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
    Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
    Will you bluff it out when you're wrong, or will you apologize?
    Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
    Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
    When it's tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
    Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
    Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
    I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
   Thank  you and good luck!