LEARN ENGLISH Jeff Bezos The Power Of Our Choices with BIG subtitles

as a kid I spent my summers with my

grandparents on the ranch in Texas I

helped fix windmills vaccinate cattle

and do other chores we also watched soap

operas every afternoon especially Days

of Our Lives

my grandparents belonged to a caravan

Club a group of Airstream trailer owners

who travel together around the u.s. and

Canada and every few summers we joined

the caravan we’d hitch up the Airstream

to my grandfather’s car and off we’d go

in a line with 300 other Airstream

adventurers I loved and worshipped my

grandparents and I really looked forward

to these trips a one particular trip I

was about ten years old I was rolling

around in the big bench seat in the back

of the car my grandfather was driving

and my grandmother had the passenger

seat she smoked throughout these trips

and I hated the smell

at that age I take any excuse to make

estimates and do minor arithmetic I’d

calculate our gas mileage figure out

useless statistics on things like

grocery spending I’ve been hearing an ad

campaign about smoking I can’t remember

the details but basically the ad said

every pop of a cigarette takes some

number of minutes off of your life I

think it might have been two minutes per

puff at any rate I decided to do the

math for my grandmother i estimate the

number of cigarettes per day estimated

the number of puffs per cigarette and so

on when I was satisfied that I had come

up with a reasonable number I poked my

head into the front of the car tapped my

grandmother on the shoulder and proudly

proclaimed at two minutes per puff

you’ve taken nine years off of your life

I have a very vivid memory of what

happened next

and it was not what I had expected I

expected to be applauded for my

cleverness and my arithmetic skills Jeff

you’re so smart

you had to have made some tricky

estimates figure out the number of

minutes in a year and do some division

that’s not what happened

instead my grandmother burst into tears

i sat in the back seat I didn’t know

what to do well my grandmother was

crying my grandfather who’d been driving

in silence pulled over onto the shoulder

of the highway he got out of the car and

came around and opened my door waited

for me to follow was I in trouble my

grandfather was a highly intelligent

quiet man he had never said a harsh word

to me and maybe this was to be the first

time or maybe he would ask that I get

back in the car and apologize to my

grandmother I had no experience in this

realm with my grandparents and no way to

gauge what the consequences might be

we stopped beside the trailer

my grandfather looked at me and after a

bit of silence he gently and calmly said

Jeff one day you’ll understand that it’s

harder to be kind than clever what I

want to talk to you about today is the

difference between gifts and choices

cleverness is a gift kindness is a

choice gifts are easy they’re given

after all choices can be hard you can

seduce yourself with your gifts if

you’re not careful and if you do

it’ll probably be to the detriment of

your choices this is a group with many

gifts I’m sure one of your gifts is the

gift of a smart and capable brain I’m

confident that’s the case because

admission is competitive and if there

weren’t some signs that you’re clever

the Dean of Admissions wouldn’t have let

you in your smarts will come in handy

because you will travel in a land of

marvels we humans plotting as we are

will astonish ourselves will invent ways

to generate clean energy and a lot of it

atom by atom will assemble small

machines that can inner cell walls and

make repairs this month comes the

extraordinary but inevitable news that

we’ve synthesized life and the coming

years will not only synthesize it but

engineer it to specifications I believe

you’ll even see us understand the human

brain Jules Verne Mark Twain Galileo

Newton all the curious from the ages

would have wanted to be alive most of

all right now as a civilization we will

have so many gifts just as you as

individuals have so many individual

gifts as you sit before me how you use

these gifts and will you take pride in

your gifts or pride in your choices I

got the idea to start Amazon 16 years

ago I came across the fact that web

usage was growing at 2,300 percent per

year I had never seen or heard of

anything that grew that fast the idea of

building an online bookstore with

millions of titles something that simply

couldn’t exist in the physical world was

very exciting to me I just turned 30

years old and I’ve been married for a

year I told my wife McKenzie that I

wanted to quit my job and go do this

crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work

since most startups don’t and I wasn’t

sure what would happen after that

McKenzie also Princeton grad and sitting

here in the second row told me I should

go for it as a young boy had been a

garage inventor I’d invented an

automatic gate closer out of cement

filled tires a solar cooker that didn’t

work very well out of an umbrella and

aluminum foil baking pan alarms to

entrap my siblings I’d always wanted to

be an inventor and she wanted me to

follow my passion I was working at a

financial firm in New York City with a

bunch of very smart people and I had a

brilliant boss I much admired I went to

my boss and told him I was gonna start a

company selling books on the Internet he

took me on a long walk in Central Park

listen carefully to me and finally said

that sounds like a really good idea but

it would be an even better idea

for someone who didn’t already have a

good job

that logic made some sense to me and he

convinced me to think about it for 48

hours before making a final decision

seen in that light it really was a

difficult choice but ultimately I

decided I had to give it a shot I didn’t

think I’d regret trying and failing and

I suspected I would always be haunted by

a decision to not try at all after much

consideration I took the less safe path

to follow my passion and I’m proud of

that choice tomorrow in a very real

sense your life the life you author from

scratch on your own begins how will you

use your gifts what choices will you

make well inertia be your guide or will

you follow your passions will you follow

Dogma or will you be original will you

choose a life of ease or a life of

service an adventure will you wilt under

criticism or will you follow your

convictions will you Bluff it out when

you’re wrong or will you apologize will

you guard your heart against rejection

or you act when you fall in love will

you play it safe or will you be a little

bit swashbuckling when it’s tough will

you give up or will you be relentless

will you be a cynic or will you be a

builder

will you be clever at the expense of

others or will you be kind

I will hazard a prediction when you are

80 years old and in a quiet moment of

reflection narrating for only yourself

the most personal version of your life

story the telling that will be most

compact and meaningful will be the

series of choices you have made in the

end we are our choices build yourself a

great story thank you and good luck

[Applause]

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