多謝各位光臨!
小9個Blog己轉左去Wordpress到,
請移玉步! 唔好意思!
http://ondog.wordpress.com
2007年1月22日星期一
巴別...塔
近來太多人談論《巴別塔》這套戲, 搞到小弟都忍唔住走去睇左。
可能係渣老板及其他Blog友的feedback,讓小弟抱住極高的期望去睇,所以又奶野,又一次失望。我當然唔期望有我最鍾意既電影《Forrest Gump》咁正,但是有像《English Patient》或《The Green Mile》的期望。不過, On Dog 對《巴別塔》都是很欣賞, 值得一看。
On Dog自己認為, 此片既女主角就更係個曰本妹, 而男主角就係個摩洛哥靚仔喇,佢係被多個差佬圍攻下,從容不迫,楂起支鎗還拖,開兩鎗已打中一個差佬,勁! 不期然令我想起《Saving Private Ryan》裡面既Sniper Jackson.
令一幕睇唔明,講個靚仔比大佬鬧完,走左去第二度,徐左條褲等我以為佢痾屎,原來係打飛機。導演想表達D乜?
2007年1月16日星期二
O9 Multiple Choice - 勞工賠償 (Part B)
※※※
很多謝CM兄及Ak兄的高見。
CM兄,我用錯字,應該係Situation,唔係Condition, 鎖你!
雖然兩位大兄皆以賠償作為處理方向,但亦有其不同之處:
CM兄的高見表現了作管理者正面的思考方法,而Ak兄亦表現了典型從商者(尤其國內的)的精明思考模式,因應國情,出盡百寶,黑白紅三道,恐嚇威迫,軟硬兼施,毒打嚴刑,無所不用其極……
(講遠左又激動左, Ak兄好像冇講得咁激,Sorry Sorry!)
O9愚見:
為公司利益著想,更係要冇事之餘又最好乜錢都唔駛洗,所以報導中先至有Denial呢招,一於唔認又唔賠,搞到埋黎先算!(典型台商作風,大陸商家好像慢慢改善中,是嗎?)千祺唔好賠,以免賠左又搞唔掂更冇彎轉。
但有小小良心者,真係點出口去解釋,個小朋友係在工廠外玩波仔,玩玩吓個波飛左入車間,佢衝入黎執波又冇人睇到佢,咪出事羅!大佬,人命黎喎!真係因工而死,連賠DD都冇,你係佢父母家人你會點?
冇架!O9真係做唔出,不論是老閭好或打工好,掂都要賠,仲要賠多D,好好睇睇之餘自己良心先過得去。其餘要做D乜,CM兄已有詳盡Action Points,小弟學野之餘不再重覆。
千祺唔好以為唔賠唔認係上策, 本來都可以算係Happy Problem,可以用錢搞掂(十皮八皮都比唔起或肉痛就收皮摺埋啦你學人做廠實業喎!),到頭來可以因小失大,想補救就太遲咧!一於做人公道點,一開始就誠心賠償,天知你悔改都出手輕D啦!(雖然人命是不能以錢來代替,但係Businese World,鎖你!只有一個scale unit, "$"也!)
兩位兄台都有個共同點,就係搞唔掂就著草。就連O9如我也一樣,更係啦!打份工者,份糧冇包埋要坐監架嗎!?
很多謝CM兄及Ak兄的高見。
CM兄,我用錯字,應該係Situation,唔係Condition, 鎖你!
雖然兩位大兄皆以賠償作為處理方向,但亦有其不同之處:
CM兄的高見表現了作管理者正面的思考方法,而Ak兄亦表現了典型從商者(尤其國內的)的精明思考模式,因應國情,出盡百寶,黑白紅三道,恐嚇威迫,軟硬兼施,毒打嚴刑,無所不用其極……
(講遠左又激動左, Ak兄好像冇講得咁激,Sorry Sorry!)
O9愚見:
為公司利益著想,更係要冇事之餘又最好乜錢都唔駛洗,所以報導中先至有Denial呢招,一於唔認又唔賠,搞到埋黎先算!(典型台商作風,大陸商家好像慢慢改善中,是嗎?)千祺唔好賠,以免賠左又搞唔掂更冇彎轉。
但有小小良心者,真係點出口去解釋,個小朋友係在工廠外玩波仔,玩玩吓個波飛左入車間,佢衝入黎執波又冇人睇到佢,咪出事羅!大佬,人命黎喎!真係因工而死,連賠DD都冇,你係佢父母家人你會點?
冇架!O9真係做唔出,不論是老閭好或打工好,掂都要賠,仲要賠多D,好好睇睇之餘自己良心先過得去。其餘要做D乜,CM兄已有詳盡Action Points,小弟學野之餘不再重覆。
千祺唔好以為唔賠唔認係上策, 本來都可以算係Happy Problem,可以用錢搞掂(十皮八皮都比唔起或肉痛就收皮摺埋啦你學人做廠實業喎!),到頭來可以因小失大,想補救就太遲咧!一於做人公道點,一開始就誠心賠償,天知你悔改都出手輕D啦!(雖然人命是不能以錢來代替,但係Businese World,鎖你!只有一個scale unit, "$"也!)
兩位兄台都有個共同點,就係搞唔掂就著草。就連O9如我也一樣,更係啦!打份工者,份糧冇包埋要坐監架嗎!?
2007年1月15日星期一
O9 Multiple Choice - 勞工賠償 (Part A)
今早有幸睇《香港早晨》,其中有一小則新聞:
內地有間廠僱用了一位童工(非法的!),這小朋友在工作中被捲入機器裡,慘死當場。
小朋友的家人自然向工廠問責及追討賠償, 據知工廠負責人否認有聘用這小朋友,及拒絕作出任何賠償。(報導完畢)
O9問題來了:
若你是工廠老板,或是工廠負責人,你會掂做?
Condition:
1. 唔知掂解,工廠真的唔生性,請左這小朋友返工。
2. 這小朋友真的是在上班時間、工作途中、工作岡位上出事,冇野好諗,好未?
Option A:
像報導中的工廠做法一樣, 拒絕承認、拒絕承擔, 以免賠錢後再比人告、比政府落charge,到時就冇彎轉。
Option B:
和小朋友家人傾個數擺平佢, 公司當比小小settle一個問題。
Option C:
Open. 歡迎任何高見!
O9 會稍後表達自己O9之見。
內地有間廠僱用了一位童工(非法的!),這小朋友在工作中被捲入機器裡,慘死當場。
小朋友的家人自然向工廠問責及追討賠償, 據知工廠負責人否認有聘用這小朋友,及拒絕作出任何賠償。(報導完畢)
O9問題來了:
若你是工廠老板,或是工廠負責人,你會掂做?
Condition:
1. 唔知掂解,工廠真的唔生性,請左這小朋友返工。
2. 這小朋友真的是在上班時間、工作途中、工作岡位上出事,冇野好諗,好未?
Option A:
像報導中的工廠做法一樣, 拒絕承認、拒絕承擔, 以免賠錢後再比人告、比政府落charge,到時就冇彎轉。
Option B:
和小朋友家人傾個數擺平佢, 公司當比小小settle一個問題。
Option C:
Open. 歡迎任何高見!
O9 會稍後表達自己O9之見。
Rocky Balboa
Extracted from "Rocky Balboa", a talk between Rocky and his son....
「Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!」
2007年1月12日星期五
一念天堂 一念地獄 (1)
有時侯,好多野都因因果果、你來我去、好黎又好去,僱主好,打工仔好,都是在某一時空下,好好去做自己的角色,交足課已無憾矣!
小弟去年亦遇到一位員工在公司非常缺人時short notice要走,原因是講明佢個女有病要佢照顧,雖然這理由比所謂"屋企有事"好很多,但有很多疑點令我不太信佢。咁又點?強留一個對公司或自己有怨氣的人在身邊多一會只會有害無益。本來我可以公事公辦,合約及法例為先,冇錯架!但一念之間我最後做了個favour佢既決定,令佢本來怨公司變為有D感激公司(我以為)。
世事好妙!因為咁,在佢last day當晚,公司火燭,而佢亦盡了佢個post的本份及能力去救亡。有時D野,真係一念天堂,一念地獄。
做老板或做管理好,有好多野只需要自己去care,下面D人不必也不可能理解太多。小弟認為對得住自己,按自己既原則去做,好與壞,天有眼的!跟住就是個天去做野!不必太介懷怎去follow up,有時自自然然,比特特燈燈,成效更好!
小弟On9相信我對你好,"你"會對我好。但"你"會是誰?是什麼?何時?往往出人意表,好難睇通,因為是上天既安排。只要做好自己就夠了!
On9 乎?
小弟去年亦遇到一位員工在公司非常缺人時short notice要走,原因是講明佢個女有病要佢照顧,雖然這理由比所謂"屋企有事"好很多,但有很多疑點令我不太信佢。咁又點?強留一個對公司或自己有怨氣的人在身邊多一會只會有害無益。本來我可以公事公辦,合約及法例為先,冇錯架!但一念之間我最後做了個favour佢既決定,令佢本來怨公司變為有D感激公司(我以為)。
世事好妙!因為咁,在佢last day當晚,公司火燭,而佢亦盡了佢個post的本份及能力去救亡。有時D野,真係一念天堂,一念地獄。
做老板或做管理好,有好多野只需要自己去care,下面D人不必也不可能理解太多。小弟認為對得住自己,按自己既原則去做,好與壞,天有眼的!跟住就是個天去做野!不必太介懷怎去follow up,有時自自然然,比特特燈燈,成效更好!
小弟On9相信我對你好,"你"會對我好。但"你"會是誰?是什麼?何時?往往出人意表,好難睇通,因為是上天既安排。只要做好自己就夠了!
On9 乎?
Steve Jobs
Thanks for 渣估's introduction to this speech of Steve Jobs.
Extracted here and share...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Extracted here and share...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
訂閱：
文章 (Atom)
