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]
[Music]