库克致“后浪”演讲：打造充满未知的更好未来

顶思 2021-11-12

5月3日，在中国被演员何冰的「后浪」演讲刷屏之际，远在大洋彼岸的另一头，苹果公司首席执行官蒂姆·库克（Tim Cook）也给年轻人灌了一壶鸡汤——向即将毕业的俄亥俄州立大学学生发表线上毕业典礼演讲。

在演讲中，他提到：「你们面临的挑战都是全新的。对你们来说，古老的教条从来都不是必须的选择。你们不能被奢华迷失了双眼，需要睁开眼睛进入一个充满困难的世界，肩负着书写一个故事的使命。这个故事不一定由你们选择，但仍然完全是关于你们的。」

本文转自公众号：互联网思想

编 | Amy

美国当地时间5月3日，库克通过 YouTube向即将毕业的俄亥俄州立大学学生发表了一场线上毕业典礼演讲。

他穿着印有俄亥俄州立大学标志的衬衫、戴着新款 Apple Watch，而不是毕业典礼上通常的礼服。由于持续新型冠状病毒疫情在美国爆发，库克不得不选择以录播的形式进行毕业典礼演讲。

在这段 7 分 55 秒的视频中，库克首先对不能现场参加毕业典礼感到遗憾，然后又回顾了1998 年加盟苹果时的情景，认为很幸运能够把剩余的职业生涯为乔布斯工作。他表示，乔布斯的病逝让他感到孤独，这恰好证明没有什么是比彼此之间的影响更加永恒、强大。

库克与乔布斯（右）

库克提到了西班牙大流感，以及富兰克林·D·罗斯福 (Franklin D.Roosevelt)、T·S·艾略特 (T.S.Eliot) 以及阿米莉亚·埃尔哈特 (Amelia Earhart) 等人感染康复后的命运。

他说:「那些睁大眼睛、敞开心扉迎接历史挑战的人，也是那些对他人生活影响最大的人。当我们雄心勃勃的计划被打乱时，人们可以做出选择。要么诅咒失去了某些永远不会失去的东西，要么挺起胸膛帮助重塑这个世界。」

库克还提到了他在 1998 年加入苹果的场景。他回忆道，加入苹果时简直不敢相信自己的运气。

「我希望我的余生都可以为史蒂夫·乔布斯工作，但是，命运就像夜里的小偷一样。我们失去了乔布斯，而我也倍感孤独。这种孤独感使我意识到世界上最永恒、最强大的东西其实是：他人赋予我们的影响。」

他与毕业生们分享了自己最近阅读的内容——有关亚伯拉罕·林肯（Abraham Lincoln）的书籍，并将其推荐给了「任何想要正确看待这些时代的人们」。

至于毕业生，库克告诉他们：「你们面临的挑战都是全新的。对你们来说，古老的教条从来都不是必须的选择。你们不能被奢华迷失了双眼，需要睁开眼睛进入一个充满困难的世界，肩负着书写一个故事的使命。这个故事不一定由你们选择，但仍然完全是关于你们的。」

他说道：「重新思考，重新采取行动。建立一个比你想象中更美好的未来。在最可怕的时刻，我要再次呼唤，让我们怀抱希望。」

以下为库克演讲全文实录（译）

感谢德雷克主席。下午好，俄亥俄州立大学！

在聊你们的未来之前，我想先花点时间聊下过去。

1918 年初，时龄36 岁的一位年轻海军助理部长被派往海外，他的任务是确保美国的新兵部队和未经训练的部队可以在第一次世界大战上做好作战准备。

同一时期，另一位仅仅30岁的反传统的诗人和学者，迫于生计，无奈中断论文写作，并同时兼职两份工作：高中教师和银行职员。

还有一位只有20岁的年轻护士，在多伦多一家军事医院照顾受伤的士兵。她工作的时间越来越长，因为除了战争的创伤外，一种奇怪的疾病也开始出现了。

是西班牙流感。当它慢慢席卷上述三人的国家、社区，甚至他们自己也不幸染病时，他们的命运永远发生了改变。

那名年轻的军官名叫富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福（Franklin Delano Roosevelt），他被人用担架抬下军舰。当他回到纽约老家后，立即被提名为副总统候选人，开始了他的国家政治生涯，这将改变历史的进程。

而那位诗人T.S. 艾略特（T.S. Eliot），在他卧病在床时，他写下了诗歌杰作《The Waste Land》。它的开头是「四月是最残酷的月份」，而这拉开了一场文学现代主义运动的序幕，他也因为这场运动赢得了诺贝尔文学奖。

当护士阿米莉亚·埃尔哈特 (Amelia Earhart) 最终被患者感染流感时，她的康复过程比大多数人都要复杂和痛苦。为了打发漫长而无聊的隔离，她会看着飞机来来往往，她开始怀疑自己是否会需要换个职业。

毕业生们，我很抱歉今天不能同你们一起在校园内庆祝毕业。你们是特殊的一届学生，会被记入俄亥俄州立大学 150 年的历史中去。

不过，我深知，即便你们不是战争时代在马蹄上作战的勇士，你们的父母、你们的亲人、你们的朋友和老师，对你们所取得的成就同样感到自豪。

处于画框里的人不会知道他所在的这副画是什么样子，你们亦是如此。但我希望你能把这些不寻常的情况作为一种荣誉勋章铭记。

那些睁大眼睛、敞开心扉，在不安与奋斗中迎接历史挑战的人，也恰恰是给别人带来巨大影响的人。

在每个时代，生活都以一种令人沮丧的方式提醒我们，我们不是故事的唯一作者。不管我们愿意与否，我们都必须与一个自私的合作者分享荣誉，这个合作者就是我们周围的环境。

当我们雄心勃勃的计划被打乱、我们的希望破灭时，我们就只剩下一个选择。要么诅咒失去的某件东西，要么挺起胸膛帮助重塑这个世界。

1998 年加入苹果公司时，我简直不敢相信自己如此好运。我将在接下来的职业生涯中为史蒂夫·乔布斯工作。但是，命运就像夜里的小偷一样。我们失去了乔布斯，而我也倍感孤独。这种孤独感使我意识到世界上最永恒、最强大的东西其实是：他人赋予我们的影响。

如果我们回首这段时光，想起那些不便、甚至无聊的瞬间，其实都是幸福的。因为在更多时候，我们想到的是真正的困难和恐惧。

当我们向我们所爱的人和朋友寻求安慰的时候，好好想想那些对你生活的影响更遥远但同样有意义的人。

想想一位没有合法证件的父亲，他被所在的社区忽视或鄙视，今天为了养活他的家人和你的家人，他在田里冒着危险工作。

想想一位单身母亲，她晚上整理货架，早上开着城市公交车，如果没有她，很多东西都会分崩离析。

想想医院里的保洁人员，他们用手和膝盖擦洗病房，他们今天的工作就像净化寺庙的大祭司一样孤独和神圣。

最重要的是，想想你们自己，幸运地接受了世界级的教育。并在这份教育的滋养下，可以与众不同地行动与工作。

请铭记，这些时刻揭示了什么才是真正重要的：我们所爱的人的健康和幸福，我们社区的恢复力，以及那些从医生到垃圾收集者为服务他人而奉献自己的人所做出的牺牲。

不能离开家给你们留下了很多空隙来填补。我一直在试着利用这段时间来阅读，特别是有关亚伯拉罕·林肯的书籍。

我会把它们推荐给任何想要正确看待这个时代的人。你会惊讶于他的想法仍然是多么聪明、有趣和活泼，这个保守而谦逊的人是如何在喧嚣的时代设法唤起别人的希望的。

在我们庆祝俄亥俄州立大学成立 150 周年之际，值得记住的是，如果没有林肯签署成为法律的赠地大学制度，这所学校就不会存在。

很难想象还有什么人比他更受环境的限制。林肯发现他的国家正处于水深火热之中，于是他选择了投身其中。他把自己所拥有的一切都奉献给了他的人民。

他说:「宁静过去的教条不适用于风雨交加的现在。形势严峻，我们必须顺势而起。我们的情况是新的，所以我们必须重新思考，重新行动。我们必须解放自己，然后才能拯救我们的国家。」

毕业生们，你们面临的挑战都是全新的。

对你们来说，古老的教条从来都不是必须的选择。你们不能被奢华迷失了双眼。

你们进入了一个需要全力攻克各种困难的世界，肩负着书写一个故事的使命。这个故事不一定由你们选择，但仍然完全是关于你们的。

你们是父母和祖父母的骄傲，是亲朋好友和老师的骄傲，是那些以看得见和看不见的方式塑造了你们的社区的骄傲。

你们的未来还需要继续被书写，这需要你们不断的努力与奋斗。

今天是你们的。

重新思考，重新行动。

建立一个比你想象中更美好的未来。

在一个可怕的时刻，再次呼唤我们充满希望。

祝贺你们所有人毕业！非常感谢！

库克演讲全文实录（英文）

Thanks President Drake. Good afternoon OSU.

Before we get to the important work of your future, I want to take a moment to consider our past.

As 1918 dawned, a young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, just 36 at the time, was headed overseas, tasked with making sure America’s green and untested troops were ready for action in Europe’s great war.

An iconoclastic poet and academic, barely 30, balanced odd jobs as a high school teacher and banker after the outbreak of war had dashed his hopes of defending his dissertation.

And a young nurse, only 20, began caring for wounded soldiers at a military hospital in Toronto. She worked ever-longer hours as a strange sickness began to appear beside the wounds of war.

By the time the Spanish Flu swept through their countries, their communities and their bodies, these three would be forever changed.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was carried off a military ship on a stretcher. Once he’d recovered back home in New York, he was the nominee for Vice President, beginning a career in national politics that would change the course of history.

While lying in his sick bed, T.S. Eliot began writing what would become "The Waste Land," his poetic masterpiece. It begins, “April is the cruelest month” and it began a movement of literary modernism that would win him the Nobel Prize for Literature.

And when Amelia Earhart finally caught the flu from one of her patients, her recovery was more complicated and painful than most. To pass the long and boring hours of quarantine and social distance, she would watch the airplanes coming and going, and she started to wonder whether she might like a change of career.

Graduates, I am sorry that we’re not celebrating together today. Your class is a special one — marked by history like few others in OSU’s 150 years.

And while we aren’t shoulder to shoulder in the Horseshoe, filling it to the rafters, I know your parents, your loved ones, your friends and teachers, are no less overwhelmed with pride in you and in what you have achieved.

It can be difficult to see the whole picture when you’re still inside the frame, but I hope you wear these uncommon circumstances as a badge of honor.

Those who meet times of historical challenge with their eyes and hearts open — forever restless and forever striving — are also those who leave the greatest impact on the lives of others.

In every age, life has a frustrating way of reminding us that we are not the sole authors of our story. We must share credit, whether we’d like to or not, with a difficult and selfish collaborator called our circumstances.

And when our glittering plans are scrambled, as they often will be, and our dearest hopes are dashed, as will sometimes happen, we’re left with a choice. We can curse the loss of something that was never going to be…Or we can see reasons to be grateful for the yank on the scruff of the neck, in having our eyes lifted up from the story we were writing for ourselves and turned instead to a remade world.

When I joined Apple in 1998, I couldn’t believe my luck. I was going to get to spend the rest of my professional life working for Steve Jobs. But fate comes like a thief in the night. The loneliness I felt when we lost Steve was proof that there is nothing more eternal, or more powerful, than the impact we have on others.

Those of us who can look back on this time and remember inconveniences and even boredom can count themselves lucky. Many more will know real hardship and fear. Others still will be cut to the bone.

And while we turn to our loved ones and friends for comfort, think hard about those whose impact on your life is more distant, but no less meaningful.

Think about an undocumented father, ignored or scorned by his community, who is putting himself at risk in the fields today to feed his family and yours.

Think about a single mother, who stocks shelves at night and drives a city bus in the morning, without whom so much would fall apart.

Think about the hospital orderly, scrubbing down the ward on hands and knees, whose work today is as solitary and sacred as a high priest purifying a temple.

Most of all, think about how you — blessed with a world-class education — might act and work and be differently when all of this is said and done.

Memorialize in your heart the way in which these times reveal what really matters: the health and well being of our loved ones, the resilience of our communities, and the sacrifices made by those — from doctors to garbage collectors — who give their whole selves to serving others.

Not being able to leave the house leaves you with a lot of odd gaps of time to fill. I’ve been trying to use them to read, and I keep coming back to Abraham Lincoln.

I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to put these times into perspective. You’ll be shocked at how clever and funny and alive his thinking still is, how this reserved and humble man managed, in noisy times, to call others to hope.

And, as we celebrate OSU’s 150th anniversary, it’s worth remembering that the school wouldn’t exist without the land-grant university system that Lincoln signed into law.

It’s also hard to imagine someone more defined by their circumstances. Lincoln found his country on fire and chose to run into the flames. And he gave everything he had to bring his people — chaotic and squabbling, fundamentally flawed yet fundamentally good — along with him.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,” he said. “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Graduates, your case is new.

For you, the old dogmas have never been an option. You don’t have the luxury of being enthralled.

You enter a world of difficulty with open eyes, tasked with writing a story that is not necessarily of your choosing but is still entirely yours.

You’re the pride of your parents and grandparents, of aunts, uncles and teachers, of the communities that shaped you in ways seen and unseen.

You weren’t promised this day. Many of you had to fight hard to earn it.

Now it’s yours.

Think anew. Act anew.

Build a better future than the one you thought was certain.

And, in a fearful time, call us once again to hope.

Congratulations to you all. Be great, be well. Thank you very much.

往期精选

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