“Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Take risks. And whatever you do, don’t be afraid to fall.”

1    On a sunny California morning in June 2005, my friends and I ran into the Stanford stadium for graduation. As part of the university’s irreverent “wacky walk,” we’d decorated our regalia with green inner tubes, floppy sombreros, and Mardi Gras beads. On the grass, we waved to our parents, brandished squirt guns, and batted beach balls around.

2    We were ready to be proud of finishing college and stepping out into adulthood.   We were ready to celebrate our accomplishment — the first, we believed, of many to come. We were ready to hear about the great future that lay ahead.

3    We were not ready for Steve Jobs’s speech.

4    Jobs was not a rousing orator. He looked nervous as he approached the podium. As he spoke, though, his voice gained the strength of someone who knows that what he’s saying is both true and very important. And something unusual happened: we all started paying attention.

5    We still are. Six years later, those of us in the stadium that morning still talk about what he said. Jobs, who stepped down as Apple’s CEO in August, passed away Oct. 5. Within minutes of both announcements, my Facebook newsfeed lit up with videos of the speech and comments posted by fellow alums.

6    Until recently, I thought that his speech resonated uniquely with my class. But when I reread it, I realized that it might have even more to say to students today, and to their families. What made Jobs’s speech so unusual, and so lasting, is that at a moment when everyone wanted to talk about success, he told us about failure. Or at least he told us about experiences we’d normally call failures. He failed an awful lot, and not in small ways.

7    But what’s interesting is what Jobs did with those failures. He learned from them, and he used them to make himself better. He audited calligraphy classes that became the basis of Apple’s fonts. After getting fired from Apple, he tried again — and changed animation history with a company called Pixar. And he returned to lead Apple to enough successes that he’s honored among the most innovative leaders of our time.

8    Days after his death, perhaps the most poignant passage to hear again is about his cancer diagnosis:

9    "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."

10    What I learned that day, and in the years after graduation, is that contrary to what we’re often told, it’s not just OK to fail. It’s essential. If we’re too risk-averse on the early, little things, we won’t get better. And not learning those lessons — about what we love, and about how to do it well — can keep us from succeeding on big things later.

11    I never met Steve Jobs. He didn’t know who I was. But I’ll always be grateful to him for pointing out that we shouldn’t necessarily aspire to constant success. Failure can be an opportunity in disguise, freeing us to pursue what really matters. It teaches us how to follow what we love, and how to do it better.

12    As Jobs told us, stay hungry. Stay foolish. Take risks. Fail often. If we do that, we’ll live meaningful lives. And like Jobs, we might change the world — one failure at a time.

1）Stay foolish. 

虚心若愚。

本句中的foolish的构成值得注意，它是由名词fool和形容词后缀-ish组合而成的。类似的例子还有很多，如：womanish(女子特有的)， girlish(像女孩子似的)， devilish(恶魔似的)，bookish(书呆子气的)，selfish(自私的)等。

2）And whatever you do, don’t be afraid to fall. 

不论你做什么，都不要害怕跌倒。

本句中的whatever相当于no matter what。这样的词还有whoever，whenever，wherever，whichever，however。（详见课后Structure练习）

3）We were ready to celebrate our accomplishment — the first, we believed, of many to come. 

我们准备好为自己的成就庆贺——这是我们认为人生将会取得的众多成就中的第一个。

破折号后面的the first, we believed, of many to come意为We believed that graduation from college was our first accomplishment, and that we would have many more accomplishments in the future。

4）If we’re too risk-averse on the early, little things, we won’t get better. 

假如我们一开始在小事情上都不愿意冒险，我们就不会变得更棒。

本句中的复合形容词risk-averse是由名词risk加上形容词averse构成的，类似的复合形容词还有：duty-free (免税的)，environment-friendly (对环境无害的)，color-blind (色盲的)，health-conscious (注重健康的)等。这个构词法值得注意。

* Read the following paragraphs until you have learned them by heart.

Days after his death, perhaps the most poignant passage to hear again is about his cancer diagnosis:

“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.”

What I learned that day, and in the years after graduation, is that contrary to what we’re often told, it’s not just OK to fail. It’s essential. If we’re too risk-averse on the early, little things, we won’t get better. And not learning those lessons — about what we love, and about how to do it well — can keep us from succeeding on big things later.