Introduction

From the time you go to high school, or even junior high school, your only goal is to get into the best colleges, so now it's natural for you to look at life from a "how to get to the next stage" perspective. "Enter" is the proof of ability, and "enter" is victory. But the "step-by-step" life guide makes our lives "mediocre".

We are born to experience our own madness: madness to break the mold, madness to think that anything is possible, madness to think that we have the talent to try. College has just begun, and adulthood has just begun. What we need to do is to affirm our values and think about the path to success that we have defined, not just accepting the life that others have given you, not just accepting the choices that others have given you.

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Many of us have dedicated our youth to four words: "step by step". I went to high school, college, graduate school, and got a job......

In the eyes of others, we are all synonymous with "excellent", but what you yourself did not expect is that in the continuous "excellent", we have lived our own people into "mediocrity".

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01

"What are you going to do?"

What are You Going to Do?

What Are You Going to Do With That?

The question posed by my title is, of course, a classic humanities-oriented major: what is the practical value of studying literature, art, or philosophy?

You must be wondering, why did I ask this question at Stanford, which is famous for its technology? Is there anything to question about the fact that a college degree certainly opens up a multitude of opportunities for people?

But that's not the question I asked. "Do" here does not refer to work, and "that" does not refer to your profession.Our value is not only our work, but also the meaning of education is not just for you to learn your profession.

Education is more significant than going to college, or even more so than all the formal schooling you receive from kindergarten through graduate school.

What do I mean by "what are you going to do" that you want to live? By "that" I mean any formal or informal training that you get, the things that send you here, whatever you're going to do for the rest of your time at school.

"Wake up one day"

"Waking up one day"

How did you go from a lively and capable 40-year-old to a 0-year-old middle-aged person who only thinks about one thing?

Let's start by talking about how you got into Stanford. Your ability to get into this university shows that you are excellent at certain skills. Your parents encouraged you to strive for excellence at a very young age. They send you to a good school, and the encouragement of your teachers and the role models of your peers motivate you to study harder.

In addition to excelling in all of your courses, you also focus on improving your cultivation and passionately cultivating some special interests. You participate in many extracurricular activities, take private lessons. You spend a few summers studying for college courses at a local university, or attending a summer camp or bootcamp for specialized skills. You study hard, concentrate and give it your all. So, you may be good at math, piano, hockey, etc., or even an all-rounder.

There's certainly nothing wrong with mastering these skills, and there's nothing wrong with going all out to be the best. The mistake lies in what the system misses: anything else.

I'm not saying that by choosing to delve into mathematics, you're failing in developing your full potential for discourse expression; It's not that you should study political science in addition to concentrating on geology; It's not that you should also learn to play the flute when you learn piano. After all, the essence of specialization is professionalism.

ButThe problem with specialization is that it limits your attention to a single point of what you know and what you want to explore.Really, everything you know is just your profession.

The problem with specialization is that it only allows you to become an expert, cutting you off from anything else in the worldcontactNot only that, but it also cuts you off from the rest of your own potentialcontact。

Of course, as a freshman, your major is just getting started. On your way to the success you desire, getting into Stanford is one of the many steps you will embark on. Three years in college, three or five years in law school or medical school or a research doctorate, and then a few years as a residency or postdoc or assistant professor. All in all, into an increasingly narrow track of specialization.

You may go from being a political science student to a lawyer or corporate agent, and then to a corporate agent who specializes in tax issues in the consumer goods sector. You go from a biochemistry student to a Ph.D., to a cardiologist, to a cardiologist who specializes in heart valve transplants.

Again, there's certainly nothing wrong with you doing that. It's just that as you get deeper and deeper into the track, it becomes more and more difficult to remember what you were back then.

You begin to miss the person who used to talk about piano and hockey, and think about what the person who used to have a lively discussion with his friends about life and politics and what he was doing in class. That lively and capable 40-year-old young man has become a 0-year-old middle-aged man who only thinks about one thing.

▲ The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band performs in the stands at Stanford Stadium, image source: Wikipedia

No wonder older people always seem so boring and uninteresting. "Well, my dad used to be a very smart man, but now he doesn't talk about anything but money and liver."

And then there's the other problem, which is that maybe you never wanted to be a cardiologist, it just happened to happen.

It is easiest to follow the crowd, and this is the power of the system. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's easy to make that choice. Or, these are simply not choices you make.

You come to a prestigious university like Stanford because smart kids do. You were admitted to medical school because of its high status, which is the envy of everyone. You chose cardiology because being a cardiologist pays well. What you do will do you good, make your parents proud, make your teachers happy, and make your friends envious.

From the time you go to high school, or even junior high school, your only goal is to get into the best colleges, so now it's natural for you to look at life from a "how to get to the next stage" perspective. "Enter" is the proof of ability, and "enter" is victory.

First at Stanford, then at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, then at the University of San Francisco as an intern, etc. Or go to Michigan Law School, or Goldman Sachs or McKinsey & Company, or whatever. Once you take this step, it seems bound to take the next step.

Maybe you do want to be a cardiologist. Dreaming of becoming a doctor at the age of ten, even if you simply don't know what it means to be a doctor. You put your whole heart and soul into that goal during your school day. You reject the temptation to have the wonderful experience of taking Advanced Placement history classes, and ignore the terrible feeling you have of babysitting while your pediatric beds rotate in your fourth year of medical school.

But either way, either because you're following the crowd or because you've already chosen your path, you wake up one day in 20 years and wonder what happened: how did you get to where you are and what it all means.

Not in the broad sense of the word, but in what it means to you. Why did you do it, and what did you do it for. It may sound like a cliché, but this "wake up one day" situation, known as a midlife crisis, has been happening to everyone.

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02

The ability to create new ways of living

Reinventing your own life

True innovation is about creating new possibilities and creating your own life.

However, there is another situation, and maybe the midlife crisis will not happen to you. Let me tell you a story from one of your peers to explain what I mean, that she didn't have a midlife crisis.

A few years ago, I attended a panel discussion at Harvard about these issues. One of the students who later participated in this discussion gave it to mecontactThe Harvard student is writing her dissertation on Harvard, discussing how Harvard instills in her students what she calls "self-efficacy," a sense of belief that you can do everything.

Self-efficacy or the more familiar term "self-esteem". She said that among the students who got "excellent" on the test, some would say, "I got 'excellent' because the test questions were easy." But other students, the kind of students who have self-efficacy or self-respect, will say, "I got 'excellent' because I was smart." ”

Again, I have to stress that there's nothing wrong with thinking that you're good because you're smart. What Harvard students fail to recognize, though, is that they don't have a third option.

When I pointed this out, she was shocked.

I pointed out that true self-esteem means that you don't care about good grades at all in the first place. True self-esteem means that even though everything you grew up taught you to believe in yourself, the grades you achieved, and all of those awards, grades, prizes, acceptance letters, and all of that, don't define who you are.

She also said that Harvard students brought this self-efficacy of theirs to society and renamed it "innovation."

但當我問她“創新”意味著什麼時，她能夠想到的唯一例子不過是“當上世界大公司五百強的首席執行官”。我告訴她這不是創新，這隻是成功，而且是根據非常狹隘的成功定義而認定的成功而已。

True innovation means using your imagination, unleashing your potential, and creating new possibilities.

But I'm not talking about technological innovation, inventing a new machine or making a new drug.

I'm talking about something elseInnovation is about creating your own life. Not to follow a ready-made path, but to create a path of your own.

▲ Image source: The movie "The World of Chumen" (The Truman Show)

The imagination I'm talking about is the moral imagination. "Morality" here has nothing to do with right or wrong, but with choice.Moral imagination is the ability to create new ways of living.

It means not following the crowd and not going to "get into" some prestigious university or graduate school next. It's about figuring out what you really want, not what your parents, peers, school, or society want. It means affirming your own values and thinking about the path to success as defined by yourself, not just accepting the life that others give you, not just accepting the choices that others give you.

Walking into a Starbucks café these days, the waiter might let you choose between a few things like milk coffee, sweetened coffee, espresso, and so on. But you can make another choice, you can turn around and go. When you go to college, you are given a lot of options, whether it's law or medicine or investment banking and consulting and whatever, but you can also do other things, do things that no one thought of before.

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03

Moral courage

Act on your values

What is more difficult than imagination is the courage to act according to one's own values.

Moral imagination is difficult, and this difficulty is quite different from the difficulty you are already accustomed to.

Not only that, but moral imagination alone is not enough. If you're going to create your own life, if you want to be a true independent thinker, you also need courage:Moral courage。No matter what others say, have the courage to act according to your own values, and will not try to change your mind because others don't like it.

Individuals with moral courage often make those around them feel uncomfortable. They are at odds with other people's views of the world and, worse, make others feel insecure or unable to make choices they have already made. As long as others don't enjoy freedom, people don't care about being in jail. But once someone escapes from prison, everyone else will run out with them.

In Portrait of a Young Artist, author James Joyce asks the protagonist Stephen Dedalus to quote the following from his upbringing in Ireland at the end of the 19th century:

“

When a person's soul is born in this country, there is a large net that covers it and prevents it from flying. You talk to me about ethnicity, language, and religion. But I want to break out of these cages.

Today, we are faced with a different web. One of them is a word I often hear when communicating with students about these issues: "self-indulgence."

Isn't it self-indulgent to try to live your life according to your feelings when you have so much to do in the process of pursuing your degree?" Isn't it self-indulgent not to go to painting without looking for a real job after graduation?"

These are questions that young people can't help but ask themselves as soon as they think about something that is slightly out of the ordinary. Worse still, they feel justified in asking these questions. Many students talk to me in their senior years about the pressure they feel from their peers and want to make a name for themselves in a creative or unique life.

You were born to experience your own madness: madness to break the mold, madness to think that anything is possible, madness to think that you have the gift to try.

Imagine the situation we are facing now. This is an important testimony to us as individuals, to morality, to our souls: the impoverishment of ideas in American society has led America's brightest young people to think that the act of following their curiosity is self-indulgence. You have been taught that you should go to university, but you have also been told that if you want to learn something that is not acceptable to the public, it is your "self-indulgence". If you are learning what you are interested in, you are even more "self-indulgent".

Which is this? Is entering the securities consulting industry self-indulgent? Is entering the financial industry a laissez-faire? Is it self-indulgent to enter the legal profession and make a fortune like many people? If you are engaged in music, you can't write articles, because it can't bring benefits to people. But working for a venture capital firm does. It is selfish to pursue your ideals and passions unless it makes you a lot of money. In that case, it would not be selfish at all.

Do you see how ridiculous these views are? This is the net that hangs over you, and that's what I mean by courage. And it's a never-ending struggle.

▲ Image source: The movie "The Shawshank Redemption" (The Shawshank Redemption)

At Harvard two years ago, one student talked about what I said about the need for college students to rethink their life decisions, saying, "We've made our decision, and we've decided as early as in middle school that we're going to be top students who can get into Harvard." ”

I wondered, who would plan to live by the decision he made when he was 19 years old? Let me put it another way, who wants a 0-year-old to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives? Or a 0-year-old furry child?

The only decision you can make is what you're thinking right now, and you need to be prepared to constantly revise your decision.

Let me be clearer. I'm not trying to convince you all to become musicians or writers. There is nothing wrong with becoming a doctor, lawyer, scientist, engineer or economist, these are all reliable and respectable options.

What I'm trying to say is that you need to think about it, think about it seriously. What I ask you to do is to make your choice based on the right reasons. What I am urging you is to recognize your moral freedom and embrace it passionately.

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04

Don't be overly cautious

Don't play it safe

Most importantly, don't be overly cautious.

Resist the temptation of those cowardly values that our society overrewards for being comfortable, convenient, safe, predictable, controllable. These are also nets. Most importantly,Resist the fear of failure。

Yes, you will make mistakes. But that's your fault, not someone else's. You'll recover from your mistakes, and,It is because of these mistakes that you know yourself better.therefromYou become a more complete and powerful person.

People often say that you young people belong to the "post-emotional" generation, and I don't think I agree with that, but it's worth taking seriously. You prefer to avoid chaos, turmoil, and strong feelings, but I would say,Don't shy away from challenging yourself, don't deny desire and curiosity, doubt and dissatisfaction, joy and gloom, which can change the course of your life。

College has just begun, and adulthood has just begun. Open yourself up to the possibilities. The depth and breadth of this world is far beyond what you can imagine now. This means that you will be far deeper and wider than you can now imagine.

Author:William Deresiewicz, American writer, essayist, and literary critic, taught English at Yale University from 2008 to 0, and is best known for "The Good Sheep: The False Education and the Path to a Meaningful Life for the American Elite"

Source:William Deresiewicz's speech at Stanford University in 5/0, abridged, translation from Yiyan.com, translator MP_Yijia

Excluded:Xia Dingying

Responsibilities:Lu Yuan