I am honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.Truth be told, I never graduated from college.And 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，我很荣幸能和你们一起参加毕业典礼，斯坦福大学是世界上最好的大学之一。说实话，（虽然）我从来没有从大学中毕业，但今天是我生命中离大学毕业最近的一天了。今天我想向你们讲述我生活中的三个故事。不说大道理，就是三个故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事是关于如何把生命中的点点滴滴串连起来。
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?
我在里德学院读了六个月之后就退学了，但是在十八个月以后，我还经常去学校。我为什么要退学呢？
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.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.This was the start in my life.故事要从我的出生说起。我的亲生母亲是一名年轻未婚的大学毕业生。她决定让别人收养我，她十分想让大学毕业生收养我。所以在我出生前，她已经准备一切，让一位律师和他的妻子收养。但是她没有料到，在我出生后，律师夫妇突然决定要一个女孩。所以，我的养父养母（他们当时还在候选名单上）突然在半夜接到了一个电话：“我们有一个意外降生的男婴，你们想收养他吗？”他们回答说： “当然！” 但是我亲生母亲随后发现，我的养母从未上过大学，我的养父高中没毕业。于是她拒绝签订收养合同。但在几个月以后，因为我的养父养母答应她一定要让我上大学，她才心软同意了。
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-cla 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 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 claes that didn\'t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.在十七岁那年，我的确上大学了。但我天真地选择了一个几乎和斯坦福大学一样贵的学校，我父母还处于工薪阶层，为了交学费，他们几乎耗光所有积蓄。六个月后，我几乎看不到在学校的价值。我不知道（我生命中）要追求什么，我也不知道学校是否能帮我找到答案。但在学校，我将花光我父母这一辈子的积蓄。所以，我决定退学，并且我相信车到山前必有路。（不可否认），我当时非常害怕，但现在回头来看，这个决定是我一生中最明智决定之一。在我做出退学决定后，我再也不用去上那些我丝毫没有兴趣的必修课，我开始去听那些看起来有趣的课程。
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 acro 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 pricele later on.Let me give you one example:
这一点也不浪漫。没了宿舍，所以我要到朋友家睡地板；为了填饱肚子，我捡过值5美分的可乐罐；为了每周一顿的好一点的饭，每个星期天晚上，我穿街过巷，步行7英里到Hare Krishna教堂。我喜欢那里的饭菜。在好奇和直觉的引导下，我跌跌撞撞地遇到很多东西，这些后来被证明是无价瑰宝。我给你们举一个例子吧：
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 claes, I decided to take a calligraphy cla 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.
那时候，里德学院的书法课程也许是全美最好的。学校里的每个海报，抽屉上的每个标签，上面全都是漂亮的书法。因为我退学了，没有了正常的课程，所以我决定去上/书法课，去学学怎样写出漂亮的字。我学到了san serif 和serif字体，我学会了怎么样在不同的字母组合之中变化间距，还有怎么样做最好的版式。那种美感、真实感和艺术感，是科学永远不能捕捉到的，（我发现）那实在是太迷人了。
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.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 cla, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.Of course it was impoible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
当时这些东西似乎在我生命中没什么可用之处。但十年之后，当我们在设计第一台Macintosh计算机的时候，就全部派上用场。我把当时我学的那些东西全都融入到Mac。那是拥有漂亮字体的第一台计算机。如果我当时没有退学，我没机会沉迷于书法课程，Mac就不会有种类繁多或的行距整齐的字体。如果Windows没有抄袭Mac，个人电脑很可能就不会这么多字体。如果我没有退学，
我不会沉迷于书法课程，个人电脑很可能就不会这么多字体。当然了，我在学校的时候不可能把这些点点滴滴提前串连起来。但在十年之后回顾过去，这些东西历历在目。
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 would made all the difference.
再说一次，你不可能把这些点点滴滴提前串连起来；你只能在回顾的时候把它们串连起来。所以你必须相信这些点点滴滴是和你的未来项链的。你必须要相信某些东西：直觉、命运、生命、因缘等等。这个方法从未让我失望过，它让我与众不同。
