原文： /p/bb3ca7059747
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.Truth be told,I never graduated from college，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.
今天，我很榮幸能參加妳們的畢業典禮，斯坦福大學是世界上最好的大學之壹。我從來沒有從大學畢業。說真的，今天也許是在我的生命中離大學畢業最近的壹天了。今天我想向妳們講述我生活中的三個故事。不是什麽大不了的事情,只是三個故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第壹個故事是生命中的點點滴滴串連起來。
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?
我在Reed大學讀了六個月之後就退學了,但是在十八個月以後——我真正地作出退學決定之前，我還經常去學校。那麽，我為什麽要退學呢?
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.
故事從我出生的時候講起。我的生母當時是壹個年輕的,尚未結婚的研究生，她決定讓別人收養我。她十分想讓我被大學畢業生收養。所以在我出生的時候，她已經做好了壹切的準備工作，我將被壹位律師和他的妻子收養。但是她沒有料到，當我出生之後，律師夫婦突然決定他們想要的是壹個女孩。
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.
所以我的養父母(他們在候選名單上)突然在半夜接到了壹個電話:“我們現在這兒有壹個親生父母無法撫養的男嬰,妳們想要他嗎?”他們回答道:“當然!”但是我親生母親隨後發現，我的養母大學沒畢業,我的父親甚至高中沒畢業。她拒絕簽這個收養合同。只是在幾個月以後,我的父母答應她壹定要讓我上大學,那個時候她才同意。
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.
在十七歲那年,我真的上了大學。但是我很愚蠢的選擇了壹個幾乎和妳們斯坦福大學壹樣貴的學校, 而我父母只是藍領階層，我的學費幾乎要花光了他們所有積蓄。而六個月後, 我卻看不到其中的價值所在。我不知道我想要在生命中做什麽,我也不知道大學能怎麽樣幫助我找到答案。
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.
但是在這裏，我幾乎花光了我父母這壹輩子的所有積蓄。所以我決定要退學,並且相信壹切會有辦法的。我當時確實非常的害怕, 但是現在回頭看看,那的確是我這壹生中曾經做過的最棒的壹個決定。在我退學的那壹刻, 我終於可以不必去讀那些令我提不起絲毫興趣的課程了，然後我還可以去修那些看起來有點意思的課程。
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:
但是事實並不是那麽浪漫。我沒有了宿舍住,所以我只能睡在朋友房間的地板上,我去撿可樂瓶子，以五分壹個的價格賣掉，這樣我就可以有點錢買吃的, 在每個星期天的晚上,我會走七英裏的路程，到城市另壹端的Hare Krishna寺廟(註：位於紐約Brooklyn下城),可以吃上每星期唯壹壹頓飽飯。我愛聖餐。我跟著我的直覺和好奇心走, 遇到了很多東西,此後被證明是無價之寶。我來舉個例子吧：
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.
在那時，Reed大學提供全美最好的美術字課程。在這個大學裏，每張海報, 每個抽屜的每個標簽，全都是漂亮的手寫美術字。因為我退學了, 不用去上那些常規的課程, 所以我決定去參加這個課程，去學學怎樣寫出漂亮的美術字。
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.
我學到了san serif 和serif字體, 我學會了怎麽樣在不同的字母組合之中改變空格的長度, 還有怎麽樣才能作出最棒的印刷式樣。那是壹種科學永遠不能捕捉到的、美麗的、歷史性的藝術精妙, 我發現那實在是太美妙了。
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.
當時這些東西好像都沒有什麽會在我生命中實際應用的可能。但是十年之後,當我們在設計第壹臺Macintosh電腦的時候,它就回歸到我身邊。我把當時我學的那些家夥全都設計進了Mac。那是第壹臺使用了漂亮的印刷字體的電腦。如果我在大學裏從沒有學那門課，麥金塔電腦就不會有多種字體或者適當分隔的字體。
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.
因為微軟都是抄Mac電腦的，很可能在個人電腦上都不會有這些了。如果我沒有退學，那我就不會旁聽這門書法課，然後個人電腦就不會像現在這樣有神奇的排印術了。當然在大學的時候，我還不可能把未來的點點滴滴串連起來,但是當我十年後回顧這壹切的時候,真的豁然開朗了。
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.（此處有缺失待補充）
再次說明下,妳不可能將未來的片斷串連起來;妳只能在回顧的時候將點點滴滴串連起來。所以妳必須相信這些片斷會以某種方式在未來的某壹天串連起來。妳必須要相信某些東西：妳的勇氣、命運、生命、因緣，隨便是什麽。這種方法從來沒有令我失望(let me down)，只是讓我的生命更加地與眾不同。