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]
{{
小时候，我和
祖父母在德克萨斯州
的牧场度过暑假
在我们周围一起旅行的人 和
加拿大，每隔几个夏天，我们就会
加入大篷车，我们会将 Airstream 搭上
我祖父的车，然后我们会
与其他 300 名 Airstream 冒险家排成一列，
我爱我的祖父母并崇拜我
，我真的很
期待这些旅行 一次特别的旅行
我大约 10 岁 我
在祖父驾驶的汽车后座的大长椅上打滚
，我祖母
坐在乘客座位上，她在这些旅行中吸烟
，我讨厌
那个年纪的气味 任何做
估计和做小算术的借口 我会
计算我们的油耗 找出
诸如杂货支出之类的无用统计数据
我一直在听一个
关于吸烟的广告 我不
记得细节，但基本上广告
都说 一支烟会占用
你生命中的几分钟 我
想每次
吸一口可能至少需要两分钟 我决定
为我祖母做个数学计算 我估计
每天的香烟数量 你
估计每支烟的抽吸次数
等等，当我对自己得出一个合理的数字感到满意时，我将
头探到车前部，拍了拍
祖母的肩膀，自豪地
宣称，每抽两分钟，
你” 你已经失去了九年的生命
我对接下来发生的事情有一个非常清晰的记忆
，这不是我所期望的 我
期望我的
聪明和算术技能会受到称赞 杰夫
你太聪明了，
你必须做出一些 计算
出一年中的分钟数，然后做一些除法
，但事实并非如此
默默地
开车停在高速公路的路肩上他下了车然后
绕过来打开我的门
等我跟着我遇到麻烦了我的
祖父是一个非常聪明的
安静的人他从来没有说过
对我说严厉的话，也许这是第
一次，或者他可能会要求我
回到车上并向我的祖母道歉
我们停在拖车旁，
我的祖父看着我
，沉默片刻后，他温和而平静地说
杰夫，有一天你会明白，
善良比聪明更难今天我
想和你谈谈的是
礼物之间的区别 和选择
聪明是一种礼物 善良是一种
选择 礼物很容易 送出的礼物
毕竟是艰难的选择 如果你不小心，你可以
用你的礼物引诱自己
，如果你这样做
，可能会损害
你的 选择 这是一个有很多天赋的群体
我相信你的
天赋之一是聪明和有能力的大脑的天赋 我
相信情况就是这样，因为
入学竞争激烈，如果
没有迹象表明你很
聪明 招生主任 不会让
你的聪明才智会派上用场，
因为你将在
我们人类正在策划的奇迹之
地
旅行
这个月可以进入细胞壁并进行修复 一个
非凡但不可避免的消息是
我们已经合成了生命，未来
几年不仅会合成它，而且
会按照规格设计它 我相信
你甚至会看到我们了解人
脑儒勒凡尔纳 马克吐温 伽利略
牛顿 历代以来所有好奇的
人都最想
活下去 作为一个文明 我们将
拥有如此多的礼物 就像你们作为
个人拥有如此多的个人
天赋一样 当你坐在我面前时 你如何使用
这些礼物 你会为
你的礼物感到自豪还是为你的选择感到自豪
我在 16 年前萌生了创建亚马逊的
想法 我发现网络
使用量以每年 2,300% 的速度
增长 从未见过或听说过
任何发展得如此之快的东西
建立一个拥有
数百万个书名的在线书店的想法
对我来说非常令人兴奋 我刚满 30
岁，我已经结婚了
一年我告诉我的妻子 McKenzie，
我想辞掉工作去做这
件可能行不通的疯狂事情，
因为大多数初创公司都没有，而且我
不确定在那之后会发生什么
McKenzie 也是普林斯顿大学的毕业生并坐在
这里 第二排告诉我我应该
去做，因为
我还是个车库发明家我
用水泥填充轮胎发明了自动关门器用
雨伞和铝箔不能很好用的太阳能炊具
烤盘警报器
诱骗我的兄弟姐妹 我一直想
成为一名发明家，她希望我
追随我的热情 我
在纽约市的一家金融公司工作，有
一群非常聪明的人，我有一个
出色的老板 钦佩我去了
我的 老板告诉他我要开一家
公司在互联网上卖书他
带我在中央公园走了很长一段路
仔细听我说
这听起来不错，但
对于那些 还没有一份
好工作
，逻辑对我来说有点道理，他说服我
在做出最终决定之前考虑了 48 小时，
从这个角度来看，这确实是一个
艰难的选择，但最终我
决定我必须放弃 一个镜头 我不
认为我会后悔尝试和失败，
我怀疑我总是会被
经过深思熟虑后决定不尝试的决定所
困扰 明天的选择 真正
意义上的选择 你的生活 你从零开始自己创作的生活
开始了 你将如何
使用你的天赋 你会做出哪些选择
你会
选择安逸的生活或
服务的生活 冒险 你会在
批评下萎靡不振还是坚持自己的
信念 当你错了时你会虚张声势
或道歉
你会保护你的心不被拒绝
或你跌倒时你会采取行动 在爱情中
你会谨慎行事还是会
在困难时有点虚张声势
你会放弃还是会无情
你会愤世嫉俗还是会成为
建设者
你会聪明地牺牲
别人还是会
当你80岁时，我会冒险做一个预测
，在一个安静的
反思时刻，只为你
自己讲述你生活故事中最个人化的版本，
最紧凑和最有意义的讲述将是
你所做的一系列选择
最终我们是我们的选择 为自己打造一个
伟大的故事 谢谢你，祝你好运
[鼓掌]
[音乐]