—— Steve Jobs

I am honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.

很荣幸与大家一道参加这次的毕业典礼，斯坦福大学是世界上最好的大学之一。

Truth be told, I never graduated from college. And this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.

说实话，我大学还没毕业，今天是我第一次离大学毕业典礼这么近。

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

今天我想向你们讲述我生活中的三个故事。不讲别的，也不是什么大道理，就只是是三个故事。

The first story is about connecting the dots.

第一个故事讲的是把点串起来。

I dropping out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.

我在里德学院只读了六个月就退学了，此后便在学校当旁听生，过了一年半我才真正离开了学校。

So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.

我为什么要退学呢？故事要从我还未出生讲起。我的生母是一个年轻的，没有结婚的大学毕业生，因此她决定让别人收养我。

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 for the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

她非常想让我被有大学文凭的人收养。所以在我还没出生的时候，她把一切都安排好了，我一出生就交给一对律师夫妇收养。但是她没有料到，当我出生之后，律师夫妇突然决定想要一个女孩。

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.”

就这样，我的养父母——当时他们还在我亲生父母的观察名单上——在半夜接到了一个电话：“我们这儿有一个期望之外的男婴，你们想要吗？”他们回答道：“当然！”

My biological mother found out later 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.

随后，我的生母发现，我的养母根本没有大学毕业，而我的养父甚至连高中都没有毕业，所以她拒绝签这个收养合同。

She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.

不过，没过几个月，我的生母就心软了，因为我的养父母答应她一定会送我上大学。我的生活就这样开始了。

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-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition.

十七年之后，我真的上了大学。当时我很天真，选择了一所几乎和斯坦福大学一样贵的学校。我的父母都是工人，他们几乎把所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上面。

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.

读了六个月后，我却看不到读书的价值所在。我既不知道我一辈子想要做什么，也不清楚大学是否能帮助我找到答案，但我几乎花光了我父母这一辈子的所有积蓄。

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.

所以我决定要退学，并且相信退学之后一切也能照常发展。不可否认，当时做出这个决定确实是非常的害怕，但是现在回想起来，这的确是我一生中做的最棒的一个决定。

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 far more interesting.

从我退学那一刻起，我终于可以不必去读那些令我提不起丝毫兴趣的课程了，然后我开始去旁听那些看起来有意思的课程。

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms.

但是那些日子一点儿也不浪漫。我没有了宿舍，只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。

I returned coke bottles for the $0.05 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.

我去退还可乐瓶子，用那5美分的押金买点吃的；每个星期天晚上我都要走七英里的路程，到城那头的黑尔-科里施纳寺庙去，只是为了吃上一周唯一一顿好一点的饭。

I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be pricelessn later on.

但是我喜欢这样。我凭着直觉和好奇心所干的事情，此后很多都被证明是无价之宝。

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.

我给你们举一个例子吧：那时里德大学的书法课大概是全国最好的。大学里的每张海报和每个抽屉标签上面的字都写的很漂亮。

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.

我因为退学了，不用正常上课，所以决定去参加书法课程，好好学学写字。

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

我学会了带衬线和不带衬线的字体，根据不同字母调整间距以及怎样把版式调得很漂亮。

It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

这门课太棒了，是一种科学永远不能捕捉到的既美丽又富有历史价值的艺术精妙。

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.

当时我并不指望书法能有什么实际应用的价值。但是十年之后，当我们在设计第一台 Macintosh 电脑的时候，所学的一切都浮现在我的眼前。我把这些东西全都设计进了 Mac。那是第一台有这么漂亮的文字版式的电脑。

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, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

如果我当时没有参加这个书法课程，Mac就不会有这么多丰富的字体以及合理的字体间距。要不是 Windows 照搬了 Macintosh，现在个人电脑就不会有现在这么美妙的字形了。

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

如果我没有退学，我绝不会选了这门书法课，个人电脑也就不会有现在这些漂亮的版式了。

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

当然我在大学的时候，还不可能把从前的点点滴滴串联起来，但是当我十年后回顾这一切的时候，真的豁然开朗了。

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

你在向前展望的时候不可能将这些片段串联起来；你只能在回顾的时候才能将点点滴滴串联起来。

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.

所以你要相信这些片段会在你未来的某一天串联起来。你必须要相信的直觉、归宿、生活和命运。

Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the configdence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.

因为相信这些点滴会串成前行的道路能给你跟从内心的自信，让你远离平凡，变得与众不同。