毕业典礼英语演讲稿（通用5篇）
In this glorious summer, we will say goodbye! Who have experienced life in high school people would say, three years of high school time is very impressive, very profound. This is not only due to the tension of living under high pressure; Chengshan the pile, the examination paper to fly sky; and when the results fall the tears flow and the development plan. Life in the future, we will be thinking slowly, slowly tastes will appreciate the deep spiritual growth of high school three years away, will always cherish the memory of his life the first time all the hard work!
As your teacher, over the past three years, we have day and night together, together we have the honor to accompany you through life's most beautiful season of youth. We are willing to remember each bright smiling faces and those flowery sun everywhere, in the early morning Shusheng Lang. In this three-year period, we can not give you more things, only doing all, tomorrow you sail for the voyage helped. In the meantime, the harsh criticism and the harsh requirements of hard training, you may be hard to accept once, but we believe that everyone can understand, because as a teacher he has done everything for their own students to do something , in order of their outstanding students.
Today, we are here the successful completion of the studies, however, the long road of life, and did not know the road to poverty. Secondary education is only the starting point in life, it only teaches you the basis of general knowledge and basic skills. Tomorrow, you will enter the new schools, more beautiful on the knowledge of waiting for you to capture, but also the vast ocean of knowledge awaiting you to travel, but also broad knowledge of the fertile soil in the waiting for you to work, more rugged knowledge of the risk in waiting for passers-by you to conquer!
Therefore, today's graduation is not only a summary of yesterday, it is the call for tomorrow is all your teachers and friends for your campaign and bolstering departure tomorrow! The journey of the future, accompanied by flowers and thorns, with setbacks and success; I speak on behalf of the graduating class of all teachers, most would like to say is:
Each person's lifetime can not be winners, General, it is impossible not to encounter setbacks and difficulties that, a critical moment should be to muster the courage to face the grim reality of courage. Said a war hero saying: on the battlefield, even if I fall, I have looked at the front of the eyes. So today, I do not wish you every success in the future; I wish you even after the fall of 9999 times, 9999 times still stand up!
在这灿烂的夏季，我们就要说再见了!凡经历过高中生活的人都会说，高中三年的时光很难忘，很深刻。这不仅仅是由于那高压下紧张的生活;那摞成山、飞满天的卷子;和那成绩跌落时流过的泪和制定的计划。在以后的生活中，大家会慢慢思考，慢慢品味，会深刻的体会到高中三年成长的心灵路程，会永远怀念自己在人生道路上第一次全力以赴的拼搏!
作为你们的老师，三年来，我们朝夕相伴，我们有幸陪大家一同走过了你们生命中最亮丽的青春花季。我们愿意记住每一张灿烂如花的笑脸和那些阳光遍地、书声朗朗的清晨。在这三年的时间里，我们无法给予你们更多的东西，只能倾其所有，为你们明天的扬帆远航推波助澜。在此期间，严厉的批评，苛刻的要求，艰苦的训练，或许曾令你们难以接受，但我们相信大家能够理解，因为作为一名老师他所做的一切，都是为了自己的学生能够有所作为，为了自己的学生能出类拔萃。
今天，大家在这里圆满的完成了学业，但，人生之路漫长，求识之路未穷。中学教育还只是人生的起跑点，它才教给你们一般的基础知识和基本技能。明天，你们将跨入新的学校，更美丽的知识之花在等待着你们去撷取，更浩瀚的知识海洋在等待着你们去遨游，更宽阔的知识沃土在等待着你们去耕耘，更崎岖的知识险途在等待着你们去征服!
因此，今天的毕业不仅是对昨天的总结，更是对明天的呼唤，是你们的所有师长和朋友为你们明日的出征而壮行!未来的征途上，鲜花与荆棘相伴，挫折与成功同在;我代表毕业班的所有老师，最想对大家说的是：
每个人的一辈子都不可能是常胜将军，不可能不遇到一点挫折和困难，关键时刻应鼓起敢于面对严峻现实的勇气。一位战斗英雄说过这样一句话：在战场上，即使我倒下去了，我的目光也要看着前面。因此，今天，我不祝你们的未来一帆风顺;我祝你们即使九千九百九十九次的跌倒之后，仍旧九千九百九十九次的站起来!
Thank you Bevan, thank you all!
I brought one of my paintings to show you today. Hope you guys are gonna be able see it okay.It’s not one of my bigger pieces. You might wanna move down front — to get a good look at it. (kidding)
Faculty, Parents, Friends, Dignitaries... Graduating Class of 20xx, and all the dead baseballplayers coming out of the corn to be with us today. (laughter) After the harvest there’s noplace to hide — the fields are empty — there is no cover there! (laughter)
I am here to plant a seed that will inspire you to move forward in life with enthusiastic heartsand a clear sense of wholeness. The question is, will that seed have a chance to take root, or willI be sued by Monsanto and forced to use their seed, which may not be totally “Ayurvedic.” (laughter)
Excuse me if I seem a little low energy tonight — today — whatever this is. I slept with myhead to the North last night. (laughter) Oh man! Oh man! You know how that is, right kids?Woke up right in the middle of Pitta and couldn’t get back to sleep till Vata rolled around, but Ididn’t freak out. I used that time to eat a large meal and connect with someone special onTinder. (laughter)
Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. How do I know this? I don’t, but I’m makingsound, and that’s the important thing. That’s what I’m here to do. Sometimes, I think that’sone of the only things that are important. Just letting each other know we’re here, remindingeach other that we are part of a larger self. I used to think Jim Carrey is all that I was...
Just a flickering light
A dancing shadow
The great nothing masquerading as something you can name
Dwelling in forts and castles made of witches – wishes! Sorry, a Freudian slip there
Seeking shelter in caves and foxholes, dug out hastily
An archer searching for his target in the mirror
Wounded only by my own arrows
Begging to be enslaved
Pleading for my chains
Blinded by longing and tripping over paradise – can I get an “Amen”?! (applause)
You didn’t think I could be serious did ya’? I don't think you understand who you're dealingwith! I have no limits! I cannot be contained because I’m the container. You can’t containthe container, man! You can’t contain the container! (laughter)
I used to believe that who I was ended at the edge of my skin, that I had been given this littlevehicle called a body from which to experience creation, and though I couldn’t have asked for asportier model, (laughter) it was after all a loaner and would have to be returned. Then, Ilearned that everything outside the vehicle was a part of me, too, and now I drive aconvertible. Top down wind in my hair! (laughter)
I am elated and truly, truly, truly excited to be present and fully connected to you at thisimportant moment in your journey. I hope you’re ready to open the roof and take it all in?! (audience doesn’t react) Okay, four more years then! (laughter)
I want to thank the Trustees, Administrators and Faculty of MUM for creating an institutionworthy of Maharishi’s ideals of education. A place that teaches the knowledge and experiencenecessary to be productive in life, as well as enabling the students, through TranscendentalMeditation and ancient Vedic knowledge to slack off twice a day for an hour and a half!! (laughter) — don’t think you’re fooling me!!! — (applause) but, I guess it has some benefits.It does allow you to separate who you truly are and what’s real, from the stories that runthrough your head.
You have given them the ability to walk behind the mind’s elaborate set decoration, and tosee that there is a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and anactual dog that’s going to eat you. (laughter) That may sound like no big deal, but many neverlearn that distinction and spend a great deal of their lives living in fight or flight response.
I’d like to acknowledge all you wonderful parents — way to go for the fantastic job you’vedone — for your tireless dedication, your love, your support, and most of all, for the attentionyou’ve paid to your children. I have a saying, “Beware the unloved,” because they willeventually hurt themselves... or me! (laughter)
But when I look at this group here today, I feel really safe! I do! I’m just going to say it — myroom is not locked! My room is not locked! (laughter) No doubt some of you will turn out to becrooks! But white-collar stuff — Wall St. ya’ know, that type of thing — crimes committed bypeople with self-esteem! Stuff a parent can still be proud of in a weird way. (laughter)
And to the graduating class of 20xx — minus 3! You didn't let me finish! (laughter) —Congratulations! (applause) Yes, give yourselves a round of applause, please. You are thevanguard of knowledge and consciousness; a new wave in a vast ocean of possibilities. On theother side of that door, there is a world starving for new leadership, new ideas.
I’ve been out there for 30 years! She’s a wild cat! (laughter) Oh, she’ll rub up against your legand purr until you pick her up and start pettin’ her, and out of nowhere she’ll swat you in theface. Sure it’s rough sometimes but that’s OK, ‘cause they’ve got soft serve ice cream withsprinkles! (laughter) I guess that’s what I’m really here to say; sometimes it’s okay to eat yourfeelings! (laughter)
Fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend yourwhole life imagining ghosts, worrying about your pathway to the future, but all there will everbe is what’s happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based ineither love or fear.
So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seemsimpossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it.I’m saying, I’m the proof that you can ask the universe for it — please! (applause) And if itdoesn't happen for you right away, it’s only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order.It’s party size! (laughter)
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that was possible for him,and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant, and whenI was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we couldto survive.
I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail atwhat you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. (applause)
That’s not the only thing he taught me though: I watched the affect my father’s love andhumor had on the world around me, and I thought, “That’s something to do, that’s somethingworth my time.”
It wasn’t long before I started acting up. People would come over to my house and they wouldbe greeted by a 7 year old throwing himself down a large flight of stairs. (laughter) They wouldsay, “What happened?” And I would say, “I don't know — let’s check the replay.” And I wouldgo back to the top of the stairs and come back down in slow motion. (Jim reenacts coming downthe stairs in slow-mo) It was a very strange household. (laughter)
My father used to brag that I wasn’t a ham — I was the whole pig. And he treated my talent asif it was his second chance. When I was about 28, after a decade as a professional comedian,I realized one night in LA that the purpose of my life had always been to free people fromconcern, like my dad. When I realized this, I dubbed my new devotion, “The Church ofFreedom From Concern” — “The Church of FFC”— and I dedicated myself to that ministry.
What’s yours? How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide?That’s all you have to figure out. As someone who has done what you are about to go do, I cantell you from experience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. (applause)
Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was inyour heart. My choosing to free people from concern got me to the top of a mountain. Lookwhere I am — look what I get to do! Everywhere I go – and I’m going to get emotionalbecause when I tap into this, it really is extraordinary to me — I did something that makespeople present their best selves to me wherever I go. (applause) I am at the top of themountain and the only one I hadn’t freed was myself and that’s when my search for identitydeepened.
I wondered who I’d be without my fame. Who would I be if I said things that people didn’t wantto hear, or if I defied their expectations of me? What if I showed up to the party without myMardi Gras mask and I refused to flash my breasts for a handful of beads? (laughter) I’ll giveyou a moment to wipe that image out of your mind. (laughter)
But you guys are way ahead of the game. You already know who you are and that peace, thatpeace that we’re after, lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others,beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself. You can join the game, fight thewars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace, you have to let the armor fall. Yourneed for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the wayof the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory. (A sheet dropsand reveals Jim’s painting. Applause.)
(Re: the painting) It’s not big enough! (kidding) This painting is big for a reason. This paintingis called “High Visibility.” (laughter) It’s about picking up the light and daring to be seen. Here’sthe tricky part. Everyone is attracted to the light. The party host up in the corner (refers topainting) who thinks unconsciousness is bliss and is always offering a drink from the bottlesthat empty you; Misery, below her, who despises the light — can’t stand when you’re doing well— and wishes you nothing but the worst; The Queen of Diamonds who needs a King to build herhouse of cards; And the Hollow One, who clings to your leg and begs, “Please don’t leave mebehind for I have abandoned myself.”
Even those who are closest to you and most in love with you; the people you love most in theworld can find clarity confronting at times. This painting took me thousands of hours tocomplete and — (applause) thank you — yes, thousands of hours that I’ll never get back, I’llnever get them back (kidding) — I worked on this for so long, for weeks and weeks, like a madman alone on a scaffolding — and when I was finished one of my friends said, “This would be acool black light painting.” (laughter)
So I started over. (All the lights go off in the Dome and the painting is showered with blacklight.) Whooooo! Welcome to Burning Man! (applause) Some pretty crazy characters right?Better up there than in here. (points to head) Painting is one of the ways I free myself fromconcern, a way to stop the world through total mental, spiritual and physical involvement.
But even with that, comes a feeling of divine dissatisfaction. Because ultimately, we’re notthe avatars we create. We’re not the pictures on the film stock. We are the light that shinesthrough it. All else is just smoke and mirrors. Distracting, but not truly compelling.
I’ve often said that I wished people could realize all their dreams of wealth and fame so theycould see that it’s not where you’ll find your sense of completion. Like many of you, I wasconcerned about going out in the world and doing something bigger than myself, untilsomeone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself! (laughter)
My soul is not contained within the limits of my body. My body is contained within thelimitlessness of my soul — one unified field of nothing dancing for no particular reason,except maybe to comfort and entertain itself. (applause) As that shift happens in you, youwon’t be feeling the world you’ll be felt by it — you will be embraced by it. Now, I’m always atthe beginning. I have a reset button called presence and I ride that button constantly.
Once that button is functional in your life, there’s no story the mind could create that will beas compelling. The imagination is always manufacturing scenarios — both good and bad —and the ego tries to keep you trapped in the multiplex of the mind. Our eyes are not onlyviewers, but also projectors that are running a second story over the picture we see in front ofus all the time. Fear is writing that script and the working title is, ‘I’ll never be enough.’
You look at a person like me and say, (kidding) “How could we ever hope to reach those kinds ofheights, Jim? How can I make a painting that's too big for any reasonable home? How do youfly so high without a special breathing apparatus?” (laughter)
This is the voice of your ego. If you listen to it, there will always be someone who seems to bedoing better than you. No matter what you gain, ego will not let you rest. It will tell you thatyou cannot stop until you’ve left an indelible mark on the earth, until you’ve achievedimmortality. How tricky is the ego that it would tempt us with the promise of something wealready possess.
So I just want you to relax—that’s my job—relax and dream up a good life! (applause) I had asubstitute teacher from Ireland in the second grade that told my class during Morning Prayerthat when she wants something, anything at all, she prays for it, and promises something inreturn and she always gets it. I’m sitting at the back of the classroom, thinking that my familycan’t afford a bike, so I went home and I prayed for one, and promised I would recite therosary every night in exchange. Broke it—broke that promise. (laughter)
Two weeks later, I got home from school to find a brand new mustang bike with a banana seatand easy rider handlebars — from fool to cool! My family informed me that I had won the bikein a raffle that a friend of mine had entered my name in, without my knowledge. That type ofthing has been happening ever since, and as far as I can tell, it’s just about letting theuniverse know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it might come topass. (applause)
Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, but to open the door in yourhead and when the doors open in real life, just walk through it. Don’t worry if you miss yourcue. There will always be another door opening. They keep opening.
And when I say, “life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you.” I really don’t know if that’strue. I’m just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial sothat I can deal with them in the most productive way. You’ll come up with your own style,that’s part of the fun!
Oh, and why not take a chance on faith as well? Take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith.Not hope, but faith. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire.Faith leaps over it.
You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world and after you walk through thosedoors today, you will only ever have two choices: love or fear. Choose love, and don’t ever letfear turn you against your playful heart.
Thank you. Jai Guru Dev. I’m so honored. Thank you.
Today, I speak from this podium a final time as your president. As I depart, I want to thank all of you - students, faculty, alumni and staff - with whom I have been privileged to work over these past years. Some of us have had our disagreements, but I know that which unites us transcends that which divides us. I leave with a full heart, grateful for the opportunity I have had to lead this remarkable institution.
今天，我将以校长的身份，最后一次在这个讲台上演讲。即将离任前，我要感谢诸位学生、教师、校友和员工，而且非常荣幸在过去的5年里能与你们共事。我们中的一些人意见不尽相同， 但是，我知道，我们的共识远远超越分歧。我心满意足的离开哈佛，感激你们给我机会领导这所杰出的学府。
Since I delivered my inaugural address, 56 months ago, I have learned an enormous amount—about higher education, about leadership, and also about myself. Some things look different to me than they did five years ago. The world that today’s Harvard’s graduates are entering is a profoundly different one than the world administrators entered.
自从56个月前我发表上任讲话以来，我学到了很多——关于高等教育，关于领导艺术，也关于自我完善。在我看来，现在与5年前不同了。今天的哈佛毕业生正在进入的世界和管理人员当年所进入的世界相比已是大相径庭了。
It is a world where opportunities have never been greater for those who know how to teach children to read, or those who know how to distribute financial risk; never greater for those who understand the cell and the pixel; never greater for those who can master, and navigate between, legal codes, faith traditions, computer platforms, political viewpoints.
现今世界，机遇对于这些人来说是空前的：他们知道如何教子女阅读;他们知道如何组合投资;他们懂得基本存储单元和像素概念;他们能掌握各种法典、传统信仰、计算机平台、政治观点并在其中游刃有余。
It is also a world where some are left further and further behind - those who are not educated, those trapped in poverty and violence, those for whom equal opportunity is just a hollow phrase.
同时，现今世界，一些人越来越落后于时代。这些人没受过教育、深陷于贫穷和暴力、平等机遇对他们而言，仅是一句空话。
Scientific and technological advances are enabling us to comprehend the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the most basic constituents of matter, and the miracle of life.
科技进步正在使我们能够探索宇宙的边陲、物质最基本的成分及生命的奇迹。
At the same time, today, the actions, and inaction, of human beings imperil not only life on the planet, but the very life of the planet.
与此同时，今天，人类所做的及没能做到的事情，不仅危害到这个星球上的生命，也危害到该星球的寿命。
Globalization is making the world smaller, faster and richer. Still, 9/11, avian flu, and Iran remind us that a smaller, faster world is not necessarily a safer world.
全球化正在使地球变得愈来愈小、愈来愈快和愈来愈富有。尽管如此，9/11、禽流感及伊朗提醒我们，更小更快的世界决不意味着其更安全。
Our world is bursting with knowledge - but desperately in need of wisdom. Now, when sound bites are getting shorter, when instant messages crowd out essays, and when individual lives grow more frenzied, college graduates capable of deep reflection are what our world needs.
我们正处于一个知识爆炸的世界之中，不过，迫切需要智慧。现在，在原声摘要播出变得愈来愈短，即时信息淘汰了杂记文，个人生活变得如痴如狂之际，这个世界还是需要能够深思的大学生。
For all these reasons I believed - and I believe even more strongly today - in the unique and irreplaceable mission of universities.
考虑到这些理由，我过去信仰，而今天甚至更加强烈地信仰大学独特的、无可取代的使命。
Universities are where the wisdom we cannot afford to lose is preserved from generation to generation. Among all human institutions, universities can look beyond present norms to future possibilities, can look through current considerations to emergent opportunities.
大学是人类把不可或缺的智慧世代流传的殿堂。就人类所有公共机构而言，仅仅大学，能够超越当前的准则，注意到未来的可能性;能通过目前的判断，注意到突发的机遇。
And among universities, Harvard stands out. With its great tradition, its iconic reputation, its remarkable network of 300,000 alumni, Harvard has never had as much potential as it does now.
哈佛在大学中间，鹤立鸡群。凭其伟大的传统、因袭声誉及其非凡的300000校友网，哈佛的潜力前所未有。
And yet, great and proud institutions, like great and proud nations at their peak, must surmount a very real risk: that the very strength of their traditions will lead to caution, to an inward focus on prerogative and to a complacency that lets the world pass them by.
可是，就像伟大和自豪的国家在其鼎盛时期一样，它们必须克服一个完全不能掉以轻心的危险因素：它们传统的绝对强势将会导致谨小慎微、追求内部特权及自满，这将使它们不能与时俱进。
And so I say to you that our University today is at an inflection point in its history. At such a moment, there is temptation to elevate comfort and consensus over progress and clear direction, but this would be a mistake. The University’s matchless resources - human, physical, financial - demand that we seize this moment with vision and boldness. To do otherwise would be a lost opportunity. We can spur great deeds that history will mark decades and even centuries from now. If Harvard can find the courage to change itself, it can change the world.
今天，哈佛正处于其历史的转折点。此时此刻的自然倾向是，把贪图舒适和随波逐流留凌驾于进步和方向性之上，但，这可能是错误的。大学无与伦比的资源 ——人力、物力、财力——要求我们远见卓识和勇敢地抓住这个时机，否则，将会坐失良机。我们能推动将会被历史永世铭记的伟大的事业。如果哈佛能找到勇气来改变自己，它就能改变世界。
my dear teachers and classmates ,good evening!
today i stand here to stand for all our graduates to say good bye to our beloved school ,to this unforgettable memory and to our dear teachers and classmates .and this is the time to say thank you to all my teachers .
how time flies ,it has been 3 years since we entered the school .but there are so many things is worth to cherishing ,such as the bright classroom ,tall trees and beautiful flowers .
we spent these 3 years with hardship and happiness ,fully and meaningful ,sorrow and happy and during this time we learned a lot . up to now ,we not only learned chinese , maths,physics ,chemistry, but also learned how to write articles etc .
above all ,it makes me know what is love.it is the result of our teachers hardworking .even though we will left our mother school ,we will never give up receiving advanced education .take it easy ,my dear teachers !i wont let you in the future.
Thank you!
i am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. i never graduated from college. truth be told, 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.
the first story is about connecting the dots.
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?
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.
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. 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.
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: 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. 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.
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 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.
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.
my second story is about love and loss.
i was lucky – i found what i loved to do early in life. woz and i started apple in my parents garage when i was 20. we worked hard, and in 10 years apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. we had just released our finest creation - the macintosh - a year earlier, and i had just turned 30. and then i got fired. how can you get fired from a company you started?
well, as apple grew we hired someone who i thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. but then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. when we did, our board of directors sided with him. so at 30 i was out. and very publicly out. what had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
i really didn't know what to do for a few months. i felt that i had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that i had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. i met with david packard and bob noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. i was a very public failure, and i even thought about running away from the valley. but something slowly began to dawn on me – i still loved what i did. the turn of events at apple had not changed that one bit. i had been rejected, but i was still in love. and so i decided to start over.
i didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. the heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. it freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
during the next five years, i started a company named next, another company named pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, toy story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. in a remarkable turn of events, apple bought next, i retuned to apple, and the technology we developed at next is at the heart of apple's current renaissance. and laurene and i have a wonderful family together.
i'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if i hadn't been fired from apple. it was awful tasting medicine, but i guess the patient needed it.
sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. don't lose faith. i'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that i loved what i did.
you've got to find what you love. and that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. if you haven't found it yet, keep looking. don't settle. as with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. and, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. so keep looking until you find it. don't settle.
my third story is about death.
when i was 17, i read a quote that went something like: "if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." it made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, i have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "if today were the last day of。