2008届本科毕业仪式上的讲话
In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom. Here I am in a pulpit, dressed like a Puritan minister — an apparition that would have horrified many of my distinguished forebears and perhaps rededicated some of them to the extirpation of witches. This moment would have propelled Increase and Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” But here I am and there you are and it is the moment of and for Veritas.
在这所久负盛名的大学的标新立异的典礼上，我站在了你们的眼前，被等待着给予一些蕴含着恒久智慧的舆论。站在这个讲坛上，我穿得像个清教徒教长——一个可能会吓到我的杰出先辈们的怪物，或者使他们中的一些人重新致力于革除巫婆的事业上。这个时刻兴许曾鼓励了很多清教徒成为教长。但当初，我在上面，你们在下面，此时此刻，属于真谛，为了真理。
You have been undergraduates for four years. I have been president for not quite one. You have known three presidents; I one senior class. Where then lies the voice of experience? Maybe you should be offering the wisdom. Perhaps our roles could be reversed and I could, in Harvard Law School style, do cold calls for the next hour or so.
你们已经在哈佛做了四年的大学生，而我当哈佛校长还不到一年。你们认识了三个校长，而我只意识了你们这一届大四的。算起来我哪有资历说什么教训之谈？也许应当由你们上来展示一下智慧。要不我们换换地位？而后我就可以像哈佛法学院的学生那样，在接下来的一个小时内不断地冷不防地提出问题。
We all do seem to have made it to this point — more or less in one piece. Though I recently learned that we have not provided you with dinner since May 22. I know we need to wean you from Harvard in a figurative sense. I never knew we took it quite so literally.
学校和学生们仿佛都在尽力让时光来到这一时刻，而且还差不多是步调一致的。我这两蠢才得悉哈佛从5月22日开端就不向你们供给伙食了。固然有比方说“我们迟早得给你们断奶”，但没想到我们的后勤还真的早早就把“奶”给断了。
But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment. Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions. “What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?” (Forty years. I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available. But please remember I was young for my class.)
现在仍是让我们回到我方才提到的发问题的事上吧。让我们假想下这是个哈佛大学给本科生的毕业服务，是以问答的情势。你们将问些问题，比方：“福校长啊，人生的价值是什么呢？我们上这大学四年是为了什么呢？福校长，你大学毕业到现在的40年里必定学到些什么货色可以教给我们吧？”
In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year. On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly. And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.
在某种水平上，在从前的一年里你们一直都在让我从事这种问答。从仅仅这些问题上，即使你们措辞问题都偏向于狭义，而我除了思考怎么做出回答外，更激发我去思考的，是你们为什么问这些问题。
Let me explain. It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007. Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad. The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space. In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy. Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, ibanking?
听我解释。提问从2007年冬天我的任职被颁布时与校方的会见就开始了。然后提问一直持续，不管是我在Kirkland House（哈佛的12个本科生宿舍之一）吃午饭还是在Leverett House（哈佛的12个本科生宿舍之一，本科高年级学生应用）吃晚饭，或是当我在办公时间与学生会面，甚至是我在与国外认识的刚考来的研究生的谈话中。你们问的第一个问题不是关于课业，不是让我提倡议，也不是为了和教师接触，甚至是想向我提提议。事实上，更不是为了和我探讨酒精政策。相反，你们不厌其烦问的却是：为什么我们之中这么多人将去华尔街？为什么我们大批的学生都从哈佛走向了金融，理财咨询，投行？
There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it. There is the Willie Sutton approach. You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies. They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else. Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America; one of you will dance tango and work in dance therapy in Argentina; another will be engaged in agricultural development in Kenya; another, with an honors degree in math, will study poetry; another will train as a pilot with the USAF; another will work to combat breast cancer. Numbers of you will go to law school, medical school, and graduate school. But, consistent with the pattern Goldin and Katz have documented, a considerable number of you are selecting finance and consulting. The Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice. This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.
对于这个问题有多种思考和答复方法。有一种说明就是如Willie Sutton所说的，所有向“钱”看。（Willie Sutton是个抢银行犯，被逮住后当被问到为什么去抢银行时，他说：“Because that is where the money is!”）你们中许多人见过的一般经济学传授Claudia Goldin 和Larry Katz，基于对上世纪70年代以来的学生的职业取舍的研究，作出了差未几的回答。他们发明了值得留神的一点：即便从事金融业能够得到很高的金钱回报，良多学生依然选择做其它的事件。实事上，你们旁边有37人签到了“教导美国人”（Teach for America，美国的一个组织，其作用相似于中国的“盼望工程”）；1人将去跳探戈舞蹈并在阿根廷从事跳舞疗法；1人将致力于肯尼亚的农业发展；另有1人取得了数学的声誉学位，却转而去研究诗歌；1人将去美国空军接收飞翔员练习；还有1人将参加到与乳癌抗战当中。你们中的很多人将去法学院，医学院或研讨生院。然而，和Goldin 和Katz教学有据证实的一样，你们中相称一局部人将抉择金融和理财征询。Crimson对上届学生的考察显示，在就业的学生中，58%的男生和43%的女生做出了这个挑选。今年，即使在经济受挑衅的一年，这个数据是39%。
High salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut, the reassurance for many of you that you will be in New York working and living and enjoying life alongside your friends, the promise of interesting work — there are lots of ways to explain these choices. For some of you, it is a commitment for only a year or two in any case. Others believe they will best be able to do good by first doing well. Yet, you ask me why you are following this path.
也许是为了高薪——难以抵御的招聘引诱，也许是为了留在纽约然后和友人们一起工作生活和享受人生，也许是为了做自己感兴致的工作——对于这些选择可以有各种各样的理由。对你们中的一些人，无论如何那也只是个一两年的契约。其余的一部分人信任他们只有在过得“富有”了以后才有可能过得“富有”价值。不过，你们仍然会问我，为什么要走这条路？
I find myself in some ways less interested in answering your question than in figuring out why you are posing it. If Professors Goldin and Katz have it right; if finance is indeed the “rational choice,” why do you keep raising this issue with me? Why does this seemingly rational choice strike a number of you as not understandable, as not entirely rational, as in some sense less a free choice than a compulsion or necessity? Why does this seem to be troubling so many of you?
我发现我自己有时候对于回答你们的问题并没有多大兴趣，比拟而言更感兴趣的却是捉摸你们为什么提那些问题。如果果然如Goldin和Katz教授所说；如果去搞金融确切是一个“理性”的选择，为什么你们会不停地向我提出这类问题？为什么看似感性的选择却让你们当中相称一部分人认为是令人费解的，伪理性的，或出于某种需乞降逼迫所作出的并不自由的选择？为什么这个问题好像困扰着你们当中的很多一部分人？
You are asking me, I think, about the meaning of life, though you have posed your question in code — in terms of the observable and measurable phenomenon of senior career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics. The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché — easier to deal with as the ironic title of a Monty Python movie or the subject of a Simpsons episode than as a matter about which one would dare admit to harboring serious concern.
我想，你们问我的是：关于人生价值的问题。虽然你们问得比较费解——等于些可以察看和权衡的大四学生职业选择的问题，而不是那形象的，艰涩的，甚至会令人为难的形而上学范围的问题。人生价值，要人生？还是要价值？作为Monty Python那部电影（指的是六人行里《人生的价值》那一集）的讥讽意味的片名是不难懂得的，作为《辛普森一家》（美国特殊受欢送的动画持续剧）的其中一集的主题也是不难理解的，可是当关系到“生存问题”的时候，就是不那么好办了。
But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.
那让我们还是暂时摘下那戴着的哈佛面具，收起那缺少热情的冷淡，卸下我们看似刀枪不入的假装，让我们尝试去探寻你们问的一些问题的答案。
I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally successful, but to be meaningful, and you are not sure how those two goals fit together. You are not sure if a generous starting salary at a prestigious brand name organization together with the promise of future wealth will feed your soul.
我觉得，你们之所以担忧，是因为你们不想仅仅是获得传统意思上的成功，而且要活得有价值。可是你们不明白“鱼”与“熊掌”怎样才能“兼得”。你们不清晰是否，一家占有著名品牌的企业提供的数量可观的并且预期着你未来财产的起薪，可以让你们的灵魂得到满意。
Why are you worried? Partly it is our fault. We have told you from the moment you arrived here that you will be the leaders responsible for the future, that you are the best and the brightest on whom we will all depend, that you will change the world. We have burdened you with no small expectations. And you have already done remarkable things to fulfill them: your dedication to service demonstrated in your extracurricular engagements, your concern about the future of the planet expressed in your vigorous championing of sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.
然而，你们为什么担心呢？这部门地是我们的义务。当你们一踏进这个学校，我们就告知你们：你们将成为引导将来的中坚人物，你们将成为美国国民依附的最顶尖、最出色的精英，你们将转变全部世界。我们“望子成龙”的冀望使你们背上了累赘。而你们为了实现这些盼望也已经做得很好：在对课外运动的从事中，你们展现出对于服务性工作的贡献精力；从对可连续发展的热忱拥戴，你们表白出对这个星球的关心；通过对今年总统竞选的参加，你们做出了愿望使美国政治从新恢回生力的实际举动。
But many of you are now wondering how these commitments fit with a career choice. Is it necessary to decide between remunerative work and meaningful work? If it were to be either/or, which would you choose? Is there a way to have both?
但你们中的很多人现在会问，“怎样才能把做这些有价值的事情和一个职业选择联合起来呢？”“是否必需在一份有报酬却没价值的工作和一份有价值却没报酬的工作间做出决定呢？”“如果是一个单选题，你会选哪一个？”“有不折中的措施？”
You are asking me and yourselves fundamental questions about values, about trying to reconcile potentially competing goods, about recognizing that it may not be possible to have it all. You are at a moment of transition that requires making choices. And selecting one option — a job, a career, a graduate program — means not selecting others. Every decision means loss as well as gain — possibilities foregone as well as possibilities embraced. Your question to me is partly about that — about loss of roads not taken.
你们在问我，也是问你们自己问题，即关于价值观的根天性的问题。你们在试图调停两个商品潜在的彼此竞争，承认也许不可能兼得两者。你们在阅历一次人生的转折，而这个转折须要你们自己做出一些决定。选择一条道路——一份工作、一项事业或一个研究生课题——不单单是在选择东西。每个决定都象征着“得”与“失”——过去与未来的种种可能。你们问我的问题其实有几分是关于“失”，即你废弃的那条道路让你失去了什么。
Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, representing a set of issues that is much broader and deeper than just one career path. These are issues that in one way or another will at some point face you all — as you graduate from medical school and choose a specialty — family practice or dermatology, as you decide whether to use your law degree to work for a corporate firm or as a public defender, as you decide whether to stay in teaching after your two years with TFA. You are worried because you want to have both a meaningful life and a successful one; you know you were educated to make a difference not just for yourself, for your own comfort and satisfaction, but for the world around you. And now you have to figure out the way to make that possible.
金融、华尔街，“应聘”一词已经成了这种博弈的符号，代表着比仅仅选择一条职业道路更广更深的一系列问题。这些问题早晚将面临着你们每个人——如果你是从医学院毕业，你将选择一个详细从医方向——做私家医生还是专攻皮肤病，如果你学的是法律，你将决定是用你的法律常识为一个公司法人卖命还是成为大众的正义化身，或是在 “教育美国人”两年后你决议是否持续从教。你们之所以担忧，是因为你们想领有充斥价值的同时又是成功的人生；你们晓得，你们被教育要有大的作为，不仅仅是为了个人，为了本人生涯地舒服，而是要让四周的世界因而而改变。(这句话让我很激动J)因此你们才不得不思考怎样才能让其成为可能。
I think there is a second reason you are worried — related to but not entirely distinct from the first. You want to be happy. You have flocked to courses like “Positive Psychology” — Psych 1504 — and “The Science of Happiness” in search of tips. But how do we find happiness? I can offer one encouraging answer: get older. Turns out that survey data show older people — that is, my age — report themselves happier than do younger ones. But perhaps you don’t want to wait.
我以为你们之所以担忧有第二个起因——和第一个有关系但不是完全一样。你们希望过得幸福。你们簇拥着去修“踊跃心理学”这门课——课程代号“心1504”——和“幸福的迷信”这门课，不就是为了听点人生“小贴士”？可是，我们怎样才能失掉幸福？在这儿，我可以提供一个启示性的谜底：变老。调查数据显示年长的人——也就是我这把年事的人——认为自己比年青人更幸福。不过，很可能你们没有人乐意去等着去看这个答案。
I have listened to you talk about the choices ahead of you, I have heard you articulate your worries about the relationship of success and happiness — perhaps, more accurately, how to define success so that it yields and encompasses real happiness, not just money and prestige. The most remunerative choice, you fear, may not be the most meaningful and the most satisfying. But you wonder how you would ever survive as an artist or an actor or a public servant or a high school teacher? How would you ever figure out a path by which to make your way in journalism? Would you ever find a job as an English professor after you finished who knows how many years of graduate school and dissertation writing?
在聊地利我听过你们谈到你们目前所面临的选择，我听到你们一字一句地说出你们对于成功与幸福的关联的忧愁——也许，更准确地讲，怎么去定义胜利能力使它存在或包括真正的幸福，而不仅仅是金钱和荣誉。你们惧怕，报酬最丰富的选择，也许不是最有价值的和最令人满足的选择。但是你们也担忧，如果作为一个艺术家或是一个演员，一个人民公仆或是一个中学老师，该如何才干生存下去？然而，你们可曾想过，假如你的幻想是消息业，怎样才能想出一条通往妄想的途径呢？岂非你会在读了不知多少年研，写了不知多少毕业论文终于毕业后，找一个英语教授的工作？
The answer is: you won’t know till you try. But if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance; if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But don’t begin with it.
答案是：你不尝尝就永远都不会知道。但如果你不试着去做自己热爱的事情，不论是玩泥巴还是生物还是金融，如果连你自己都不去寻求你认为最有价值的事，你终将懊悔。人活路漫漫，你总有时间去给自己留“后路”，但可别一开始就走“后路”。(说的多棒啊！)
I think of this as my parking space theory of career choice, and I have been sharing it with students for decades. Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never find a space. Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be.
我把这叫做我的对于职业选择的“停车”实践，多少十年来我始终都在向学生们“抛售”我的这个理论。不要由于怕到了目标地找不到泊车位而把车停在间隔目的地20个路口的处所。直接达到你想去的地方，哪怕再绕回来停，你临时停的地方只是你被迫停的地方。
You may love investment banking or finance or consulting. It might be just right for you. Or, you might be like the senior I met at lunch at Kirkland who had just returned from an interview on the West Coast with a prestigious consulting firm. “Why am I doing this?” she asked. “I hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t like this job.” Find work you love. It is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you don’t.
你也许喜欢做投行，或是做金融抑或做理财咨询。都可能是合适你的。那也许真的就是适合你的。或许你也会像我在Kirkland House见到的那个大四学生一样，她刚从美国西海岸一家有名理财咨询公司的口试回来。“我为什么要做这个？”她说，“我讨厌坐飞机，我厌恶住宾馆，我是不会喜欢这份工作的。”找到你酷爱的工作。如果你把你一天中醒着的一大半时间用来做你不爱好的事情，你是很难觉得幸福的。
But what is ultimately most important here is that you are asking the question — not just of me but of yourselves. You are choosing roads and at the same time challenging your own choices. You have a notion of what you want your life to be and you are not sure the road you are taking is going to get you there. This is the best news. And it is also, I hope, to some degree, our fault. Noticing your life, reflecting upon it, considering how you can live it well, wondering how you can do good: These are perhaps the most valuable things that a liberal arts education has equipped you to do. A liberal education demands that you live selfconsciously. It prepares you to seek and define the meaning inherent in all you do. It has made you an analyst and critic of yourself, a person in this way supremely equipped to take charge of your life and how it unfolds. It is in this sense that the liberal arts are liberal — as in liberare — to free. They empower you with the possibility of exercising agency, of discovering meaning, of making choices. The surest way to have a meaningful, happy life is to commit yourself to striving for it. Don’t settle. Be prepared to change routes. Remember the impossible expectations we have of you, and even as you recognize they are impossible, remember how important they are as a lodestar guiding you toward something that matters to you and to the world. The meaning of your life is for you to make.
但是我在这儿说的最主要的是：你们在问那些问题——不仅是问我，而是在问你们自己。你们正在选择人生的道路，同时也在对自己的选择提出质疑。你们知道自己想过什么样的生活，也知道你们将行的道路不一定会把你们带到想去的地方。这样实在很好。某种程度上，我倒生机这是我们的错。我们一直在标榜人生，像镜子一样照出未来你们的样子容貌，思考你们怎么可以过得幸福，摸索你们怎样才能去做些对社会有价值的事：这些也许是文理教育可以给你们“设备”的最有价值的东西（liberal arts education，可以译为自由思考的艺术的教育）。文理教育请求你们要活得“清楚”。它使你探索和定义你做的每件事情背地的价值。它让你成为一个常常剖析和检查自己的人。而这样的人完整可能掌控自己的人生或未来。从这个情理上讲，文理——照它的字面意思——才使你们自在。（）学文理可以让你有机遇去进行理论的实际，去发现你所做的选择的价值。想过上有价值的，幸福的生活，最牢靠的道路就是为了你的目的去斗争。不要安于现状得过且过。随时筹备着改变人生的道路。记住我们对你们的我感到是“过于高尚”的期待，可能你们自己也否认那些期待是有点“太高了”。不外如果想做些对于你们自己或是这个世界有点价值的事情，记住它们，它们将会像北斗一样指引着你们。你们人生的价值将由你们去实现！
I can’t wait to see how you all turn out. Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.
我都等不迭想看看你们都终极会如何。毕业当前跟学校常接洽，常回“家”看看，让咱们懂得你们的情形。
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