巴克利学校毕业演讲致辞，2009年6月10日
When I was asked to give the commencement address to a graduating class of 9th graders, I jumped at the chance. You see, I have four teenagers of my own and I feel like this is the point in my life when I am supposed to tell them something profound. So thank you Buckley community for giving me this opportunity. I tried this speech out on them last night and am happy to report that none of them fell asleep until I was three quarters done.
当我应邀对9年级学生进行毕业演讲时，我欣然接受。你看，我自己有四个十几岁的孩子，我觉得是时候对他们讲述意义深远的事情。所以，感谢大家，巴克利社区给我这个机会。昨天晚上，我对着他们试讲了一番，很高兴直到我进行了四分之三时，才有人打瞌睡。
When composing this message I searched my memory for my same experience back in 1969 when I was sitting right where you are. I realized that I could hardly remember one single speaker from my junior high or high school days. Now that could be my age. I’m old enough now that some days I can’t remember how old I am. But it could also have been a sign of the times. Remember, I was part of the student rebellion, and we did not listen to anything that someone over 30 said because they were just too clueless. Or so we thought.
在编写这篇文章时，我翻开了1969的回忆，当时我正处在你们这个年代。我意识到我基本上记不起初中或高中时代的任何一位演讲者。当然那也可能是因为我年纪到了。我年纪太大了，有时甚至不记得自己的年龄。当然那也可能是时代标记。要知道，我当年也玩逆反，任何30岁以上的人的讲话，我们都听不进去，觉得那太无厘头。或者我们认为如此。
Anyway, as I sat there considering this speech further, I suddenly had a flashback of the one speaker who I actually did remember from youthful days. He was a Shakespearean actor who came to our school to extol the virtues of Shakespeare. He started out by telling us that Shakespeare was not about poetry or romance or love, but instead, was all about battle, and fighting and death and war. Then he pulled out a huge sword which he began waving over the top of his head as he described various bloody conflicts that were all part and parcel of Shakespeare’s plays. Now being a 15-year old testosterone laden student at an all boys school, I thought this was pretty cool. I remember thinking, “Yea, this guy gets it. Forget about the deep meaning and messages in the words, let’s talk about who’s getting the blade.”
不过当我进一步考虑这次演讲时，我突然回忆起我从年轻时就一直记得的一位演讲家。他是位莎士比亚作品演员，来我们学校为莎翁歌功颂德。他说，莎翁其实并非关乎诗歌、关乎浪漫，其实质都是战役，战斗、死亡和战争。然后他拔出一把超大的宝剑，一边讲莎翁戏剧里各种血腥冲突，一边在头顶挥舞着他的宝剑。当时我是男校里一位充满睾丸激素的15岁学生，我觉得那个场面太酷了。我记得当时想，“哟，这个家伙有两下子。别管文字中的深刻含义和信息，让我们谈谈谁与争锋。”
As you can see, I have a similar sword which I am going to stop waving over my head now, because A) I think you are permanently scarred, and B) the headmaster looks like he is about to tackle me and C) some of you, I can tell, are way too excited about this sword, and you’re scaring me a little.
你们瞧，我也有一把类似的宝剑，我准备不再在我的头上挥舞，因为A)我觉得你们会被吓着，B）校长好像要过来揍我，C）我看得出你们当中有些人对于这把宝剑太感兴趣，你们倒是把我给吓着了。
I’m here with you young men today because your parents wanted me to speak to you about service—that is, serving others and giving back to the broader community for the blessings that you have received in your life. But that is a speech for a later time in your life. Don’t get me wrong, serving others is really, really important. It truly is the secret to happiness in life. I swear to God. Money won’t do it. Fame won’t do it. Nor will sex, drugs, homeruns or high achievement. But now I am getting preachy.
今天我在这里，是因为你们的家长希望我能对你们讲讲服务——即为他人服务，为你们人生已经得到的祝福而回报更大的社区。不要误会我，为他人服务确实确实很重要。它的确是幸福生活的秘密。我向上帝发誓。钱无法让你幸福。名声无法让你幸福。性、毒品、本垒或更高成就都不会让你更幸福。不过现在我的话变得有点说教意味了。
Today, I want to talk to you about the dirtiest word that any of you 9th graders know. It’s a word that is so terrible that your parents won’t talk about it; your teachers won’t talk about it; and you certainly don’t ever want to dwell on it. But this is a preparatory school, and you need to be prepared to deal with this phenomenon because you will experience it. That is a guarantee. Every single one of you will experience it not once but multiple times, and every adult in this room has had to deal with this in its many forms and manifestations. It’s the “F” word.
今天，我想告诉你任何9年级学生所知道的最肮脏的词。这个词很可怕，家长不愿意谈论；老师也不愿意谈论；你当然也不愿意谈论。但这是预科学校，你需要为此现象而准备，因为你终将经历它。那是毫无疑问的事情。你们中的每个人都会经历它，而且不只一次，是很多次，而这个房间里的每位成人都必须用各种形式和表现与此打交道。这是F开头的单词。
FAILURE. Failure that is so mortifying and so devastating that it makes you try to become invisible. It makes you want to hide your face, your soul, your being from everyone else because of the shame. Trust me, boys—if you haven’t already tasted that, you will. I am sure most of you here already have. AND IT IS HARD. I know this firsthand, but I also know that failure was a key element to my life’s journey.
失败(Failture)。失败是如此压抑，如此具有破坏性，它让你变成隐形人。让你因羞辱而想遮掩自己的颜面、灵魂，躲避任何其他人。相信我，孩子们——如果还没有尝试这滋味，你最终会尝到的。我相信你们大多数已经尝过了。这非常难受。我有亲身体会，但我也知道失败是我人生旅途的关键元素。
My first real failure was in 1966 in the 6th grade. I played on our basketball team, and I was the smallest and youngest kid on the team. It was the last game of the season and I was the only player on the squad that had not scored a point all season. So in the second half the coach directed all the kids to throw me the ball when I went in, and for me to shoot so that I would score. The problem was that Coach Clark said it loud enough that every person in the stands could hear it as well as every member of the opposing team. Going into the fourth quarter, our team was well ahead, Coach Clark inserted me and thus, began the worst eight minutes of my life up until that point. Every time I got the ball, the entire other team would rush towards me, and on top of that, that afternoon I was the greatest brick layer the world had ever seen. The game ended. I had missed five shots, and the other team erupted in jubilation that I had not scored. I ran out of the gym as fast as I could only to bump into two of the opposing team’s players who proceeded to laugh and tease and ridicule me. I cried and hid in the bathroom. Well, that passed, and I kept trying team sports, but I was just too small to really compete. So in the 10th grade, I took up boxing where suddenly everyone was my size and weight. I nearly won the Memphis Golden Gloves my senior year in high school and did win the collegiate championship when I was 19. Standing in the middle of that ring and getting that trophy, I still remember looking around for those two little kids who had run me into that bathroom back in the 6th grade, because I was going to knock their blocks off. That’s one problem with failure. It can stay with you for a very long time.
我的第一次真正失败发生在1966年，我上6年级时。我在篮球队，是队里最瘦小最年幼的孩子。当时是该赛季最后一场比赛，我是队里整个赛季都没有得分的唯一队员。所以在后半场当我走进时，教练授意所有孩子向我投球，这样我就能够投篮得分了。问题是克拉克教练说得声音太大，不仅观众席的每个人都能听到，就连对手们也都听见了。进入第四节时，我们队都遥遥领先，克拉克教练把我安插进去，从而，我人生中最糟糕的8分钟开始了。每当我拿到球时，对方所有人都会冲向我，除此之外，那个下午，我还是有史以来最伟大的水泥匠。比赛结束了。我错过了5次投蓝，对方开始庆祝我没有投进球。我尽快地跑出体育场，可却遇到了对方的两名队员，跟着嘲笑讽刺挖苦我。我哭了，躲在洗手间。好在，那都过去，我继续参加各种运动队，不过我太小不能真正比赛而已。当10年级，我参加拳击时，突然之间周围每个人的都跟我一般高一样重。高中高年级时，我险些获得孟菲斯金手套奖，而19岁时，我确实获得了学员冠军。站在那个台子中间得到那个奖杯时，我记得还在四处张望，寻找6年级时把我逼到洗手间的那两个孩子，因为我要把他们击败。这就是失败的一个问题。它会影响你很久很久。
The next time the dragon of failure reared his ugly head was in 1978. I was working in New Orleans for one of the greatest cotton traders of all time, Eli Tullis. Now, New Orleans is an unbelievable city. It has the Strawberry Festival, the Jazz Festival, the Sugar Bowl, Mardi Gras, and just about every other excuse for a party that you can ever imagine. Heck, in that town, waking up was an excuse to party. I was still pretty fresh out of college, and my mentality, unfortunately, was still firmly set on fraternity row. It was a Friday morning in June, and I had been out literally all night with a bunch of my friends. My job was to man the phone all day during trading hours and call cotton prices quotes from New York into Mr. Tullis’ office. Around noon, things got quiet on the New York floor, and I got overly drowsy. The next thing I remember was a ruler prying my chin off my chest, and Mr. Tullis calling to me, “Paul. Paul.” My eyes fluttered opened and as I came to my senses, he said to me, “Son, you are fired.” I’d never been so shocked or hurt in my life. I literally thought I was going to die for I had just been sacked by an iconic figure in my business.
失败之魔再次抬起他丑陋的头是在1978年。我当时在新奥尔良为有史以来最伟大的棉花交易商之一艾里·突里斯工作。现在，新奥尔良成了传奇城市，这里有草莓节、爵士节、Sugar Bowl, 大斋戒以及你能够想象的任何聚会。我当时大学刚毕业，很不幸，我的意识形态仍然牢牢地定在兄弟会上。那是六月的一个星期五，我整夜与一伙朋友流连忘返。我的工作是在交易时间守住电话，把纽约的棉花报价通过电话告诉突里斯先生的办公室。中午时，纽约交易厅那边变得相当安静，我又非常困。我记得的下一件事情就是有人揪着我的下巴，都快要揪掉了，突里斯先生冲着我喊，“保罗。保罗。”我的眼睛朦朦胧胧地睁开，头脑清醒后，他对我说，“小伙子，你被解雇了。”我一生中从未如此震惊如此受伤。我真得以为我要死了，因为我竟然被自己的职业偶像人物炒了鱿鱼。
My shame turned into anger. I was not angry at Mr. Tullis for he was right. I was angry at myself. But I knew I was not a failure, and I swore that I was going to prove to myself that I could be a success. I called a friend and secured a job on the floor of the New York Cotton Exchange and moved to the City. Today, I will put my work ethic up against anybody’s on Wall Street. Failure will give you a tattoo that will stay with you your whole life, and sometimes it’s a really good thing. One other side note, to this day, I’ve never told my parents that I got fired. I told them I just wanted to try something different. Shame can be a lifetime companion for which you better prepare yourself.
我的耻辱变成了愤怒。我不是生突里斯先生的气，因为他没错。我是跟自己生气。但我知道我不是失败的人，我发誓我会证明自己成功。我给朋友打电话，在纽约棉花交易厅找到份工作，搬到纽约。今天，我的职业道德可以与华尔街任何人的职业道德相匹敌。失败会给你纹身，会终身陪伴你，有时，这其实是好事。另一方面，时至即日，我都没有告诉我父母我遭到解雇。我告诉他们我只不过想尝试不同的东西。羞辱可以是让你更好地准备自己的终身伴侣。
Now, there are two types of failure you will experience in life. The first type is what I just described and comes from things you can control. That is the worst kind. But there is another form of failure that will be equally devastating to you, and that is the kind beyond your control. This happened to me in 1982. I had met a very lovely young Harvard student from Connecticut, dated her for two years then asked her to marry me right after she graduated from college. We set a date; we sent out the invitations; and all was fantastic until one month before the wedding when her father called me. He said, “Paul, my daughter sat me down this afternoon, and she doesn’t know how to tell you this, but she is really unhappy and thinks it’s time for you two to take a break.” At first I thought he was joking because he was a very funny guy. Then he said, “No, she is serious about this.” I thought to myself, “Oh, my God, I am being dumped at the altar.” I’m from Tennessee. Getting dumped at the altar was the supreme social embarrassment of that time. It was a big deal. When all my family and friends found out, they were ready to re-start the Civil War on the spot. I had to remind them that the last Civil War didn’t go so well for our side, and I didn’t like our chances in a rematch. The reality was that I was a 26-year old knucklehead, and since all my friends were getting married, I kind of felt it was time for me to do the same thing. And that was the worst reason in the world to get married. I actually think she understood that and to a certain extent spared me what would have been a very tough marriage. Instead, I’ve had an incredible marriage for twenty years to a wonderful wife, and we have four kids that I love more than anything on Earth. Some things happen to you that at the time will make you feel like the world is coming to an end, but in actuality, there is a very good reason for it. You just can’t see it and don’t know it. When one door closes, another will open, but standing in that hallway can be hell. You just have to persevere. Quite often that dragon of failure is really chasing you off the wrong road and on to the right one.
生活中你将经历两种挫败。一种是我刚刚描述的，来自你可以控制的事情。那是最糟糕的情况。还有一种失败形式也同样令人幻灭，而且完全不在你的控制中。1982年，我经历了这样的事情。我遇到一位来自康涅狄格州的哈佛女生，超可爱的，跟她约会了两年，然后她刚一毕业，我就向她求婚。我们定了日子，四处发请帖，一切都极其美妙，直到婚礼前一个月，她父亲给我打电话。他说，“保罗，今天下午我女儿让我坐下，她不知道如何跟你讲，但她真得很不开心，觉得你们两个应该分手。”一开始，我还以为他在开玩笑，因为他特逗。然后他说，“不，她可是认真的。”我对自己说，“哦，我的上帝，我竟然在祭坛边被抛弃。”我来自田纳西。在祭坛边被抛弃是当时最让人尴尬的际遇。那可是件大事。当我所有家人和朋友都知道后，他们马上就要重新掀起内战。我不得不提醒他们最后的内战对我们这一边很不利，而且我们在重赛中的机会也不容乐观。事实是，当时我是个26岁的傻瓜，我所有的朋友都结婚了，所以我觉得好像我也该作同样的事情。而那正是世界上最糟糕的结婚理由。实际上，我觉得她理解这一点，而且在某种程度上，为我省去了一个非常艰难的婚姻。现在，我拥有20年妙不可言的婚姻，有一个超级贤惠的妻子，有四个比地球上任何东西都更值得爱的孩子。有些事情发生的当时让你觉得世界末日就要来临，但其实背后总有个正当的理由。只是当时已惘然。当一扇门关上时，另一扇就会随之开启，只不过站在两道门之间时可能宛如身处地狱。你不得不坚持。通常，失败的恶魔是将你追逐出错误路线，逼上正道。
By now you are thinking, how much longer is this loser going to keep on talking. My kids are all teenagers, and whenever I’m telling them something I think is important, they often wonder the same thing. But the main point I want you to take away today is that some of your greatest successes are going to be the children of failure. This touches upon the original reason I was invited here today. In 1986, I adopted a class of Bedford Stuyvesant 6th graders and promised them if they graduated from high school, I would pay for their college. For those of you who don’t know, Bed-Stuy is one of New York City’s toughest neighborhoods. Even the rats are scared to go there at night. Statistically about 8% of the class I adopted would graduate from high school, so my intervention was designed to get them all into college. For the next six years, I did everything I could for them. I spent about $5,000 annually per student taking them on ski trips, taking them to Africa, taking them to my home in Virginia on the weekends, having report card night, hiring a counselor to help coordinate afternoon activities and doing my heartfelt best to get them ready for college. Six years later, a researcher from Harvard contacted me and asked if he could study my kids as part of an overall assessment of what then was called the “I Have a Dream” Program. I said sure. He came back to me a few months later and shared some really disturbing statistics. 86 kids that I had poured my heart and soul into for six years were statistically no different than kids from a nearby school that did not have the services our afterschool program provided. There was no difference in graduation rates, dropout rates, academic scores, teenage pregnancies, and the list went on. The only thing that we managed to do was get three times as many of our kids into college because we were offering scholarships whereas the other schools were not. But in terms of preparing these kids for college, we completely and totally failed. Boy, did this open my eyes. That was the first real-time example for me of how intellectual capital will always trump financial capital. In other words, I had the money to help these kids, but it was useless because I didn’t have the brains to help them. I had tried to succeed with sheer force of will and energy and financial resources. I learned that this was not enough. What I needed were better defined goals, better metrics, and most importantly, more efficient technologies that would enable me to achieve those goals. What that whole experience taught me was that starting with kids at age 12 was 12 years too late. An afterschool program was actually putting a band-aid on a much deeper structural issue, and that was that our public education system was failing us. So in 2000, along with the greatest educator I knew, a young man named Norman Atkins, we started the Excellence Charter School in Bedford Stuyvesant for boys. We set the explicit goal of hiring the best teachers with the greatest set of skills to be the top performing school in the city. Now that was an ambitious goal but last year in 2008, Excellence ranked #1 out of 543 public schools in New York City for reading and math proficiency for any third and fourth grade cohort, and our school was 98% African American boys. We never would have done that had I not failed almost 15 years earlier.
现在你可能想，这个失败者还要继续唠叨多久。我的孩子们都十几岁了，每当我跟他们讲我认为重要的事情，他们都会想同样的事情。但今天我想让你们记住的要点是你们某些最伟大的成绩将会成为失败之子。这其实是我今天应邀来这里的根本原因。1986年，我认领了Bedford Stuyvesant 6年级的一个班，向他们承诺，如果他们能够高中毕业，我将供他们上大学。可能你们有人还不知道，Bed-Stuy是纽约最混乱的社区。晚上连老鼠都不敢去那里。据统计，我认领的班上有8%的学生将从高中毕业，所以我的介入就是让他们全都上大学。接下来的6年里，我为他们做了我力所能及的所有事情。我每年为每位学生花5,000美元，带他们去滑雪，去非洲，周末带他们到我弗吉尼亚的家里，举办成绩汇报之夜，雇佣顾问帮助协调下午的活动，尽我所能地让他们上大学。六年后，一位哈佛研究者联系到我，问我他能不能将我的孩子们作为“我有一个梦想”项目整体评估的一部分。我说，当然没问题。几个月后，他又回到我身边，分享了一些让人真得很头疼的数据。我花了六年心血的86个孩子与周围学校没有校外服务的孩子别无二致。毕业率、辍学率、学习成绩、少女怀孕等数据都没有分别。我们唯一能够做到的事情是我们的孩子考大学的比率是别人的三倍，而那不过是因为我们提供了奖学金，而其他学校没有。但是，说到让这些孩子上大学，我们彻头彻尾地失败了。孩子们，这是不是让我开眼了？这可是第一次实时范例，让我了解人力资本如何战胜金融资本。换言之，我有钱帮助这些孩子，可因为我没有脑力来帮助他们，所以仍然徒劳无益。我尝试用纯意志力、能量、金融资源来成功。我发现这是不够的。我需要的是更明确的目标，更好的标准，最重要的是，更有效的技术，让我能够达成这些目标。整个经验给我的教训是等孩子12岁才开始，已经晚了12年。课外项目不过是给积重难返的结构问题贴一个创可贴，而那正是公立教育失败的地方。所以在2000年，我和我所知道的最伟大的教育家——名为诺曼·阿特金斯的年轻人一起在Bedford Stuyvesant为男生们开办了优秀特许学校。我们制定了明确的目标，聘用最好的老师，他们有最出色的技能，让我们学校成为城中最棒的。虽说那是个远大的志向，去年即2008年，优秀特许学校在纽约543所公立学校任何三年级和四年级学生中，阅读和数学能力都独占鳌头，而我们学校可有98%的非洲裔美籍男生。若非我15年前失败过，我们可永远别指望能做到这些。
So here is the point: you are going to meet the dragon of failure in your life. You may not get into the school you want or you may get kicked out of the school you are in. You may get your heart broken by the girl of your dreams or God forbid, get into an accident beyond your control. But the point is that everything happens for a reason. At the time it may not be clear. And certainly the pain and the shame are going to be overwhelming and devastating. But just as sure as the sun comes up, there will come a time on the next day or the next week or the next year, when you will grab that sword and point it at that dragon and tell him, “Be gone, dragon. Tarry with me and I will cut your head off. For I must find the destination God and life hold in store for me!” Young men of Buckley, good luck on your journey…..
所以，关键在于：你们将遇到生命中的失败魔王。可能你进不了自己想上的学校，或者被自己所在的学校踢了出来。可能你被梦中情人伤透了心，或者上帝禁止你那么做，或者在你完全无力掌控的情况下遭遇事故。但问题是，每件事情都不会无缘无故地发生。只是当时很惘然而已。而且，伤痛也好，羞耻也好，肯定会让你觉得无力支持，让你肝肠寸断。但是，正如太阳会升起，终会有那么一个时刻，不论是第二天，下周还是第二年，你会挥舞着宝剑，直指魔鬼，正告他，“魔鬼，滚开。胆敢和我纠结，我就把你的头砍下来。因为我必须找到上帝和生活为我保存的目的地！”巴克利的年轻人哪，祝你们一路顺风……
