– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

[Applause]

thank you I'm honored to be with you

today for your commencement from one of

the finest universities in the world

[Applause]

truth be told I never graduated from

college and 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 six

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 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've got an

unexpected baby boy do you want him they

said of course my biological mother

found out later 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 go to college this was the

start in my life 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 the money my parents had

saved their entire life so I decided to

drop out and trust that it would all

work out okay 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 far more 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 cent

deposits to buy food with and I would

walk the seven miles across town every

Sunday night to get one good meal a week

at the Hari 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 sans-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 10 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 it's likely

that no personal computer

have them if I had never dropped out I

would have never dropped in on that

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 because believing that the dots

will connect down the road will give you

the confidence to follow your heart even

when it leads you off the well-worn path

and that will make all the difference 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 parent's 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 two billion dollar company

with over 4,000 employees we just

released our finest creation the

Macintosh a year earlier and I 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 and 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'd 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 fail

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've 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 world's

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 and I returned to Apple and the

technology we developed it next is at

the heart of Apple's current Renaissance

and Laureen 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 sometime

life sometimes life's gonna hit 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 this true for work as it is for

your lovers

your work is gonna 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 and

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 don't settle

[Applause]

my third story is about depth 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've

looked in the mirror every morning and

asked myself if today were the last day

of my life what 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 all 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 doctors code for prepare to die it

means to try and tell your kids

everything you thought you'd have the

next ten years to tell them in just a

few months it means to make sure

everything is buttoned up so that will

be as easy as possible for your family

it means to say your goodbyes I live

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 doctor 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 thankfully I'm fine now this

was the closest I've been to facing

death and I hope it's 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's life's change agent it clears out

the old to make way for the new right

now the new is you but some day not too

long from now you will gradually become

the old and be cleared away sorry to be

so dramatic

but it's 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

[Applause]

when I was young there was an amazing

publication called the Whole Earth

Catalog which was one of the Bible's of

my generation it was created by a fellow

named Stuart brand not far from here in

Menlo Park and he brought it to life

with his poetic touch this was in the

late 60s before personal computers and

desktop publishing so it was all made

with typewriters scissors and Polaroid

cameras it was sort of like Google and

paperback form 35 years before Google

came along it was idealistic overflowing

with neat tools and great notions Stuart

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

[Applause]

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
life /laɪf/ A1	noun - the existence of a human being or animal from birth to death
story /ˈstɔːri/ A2	noun - an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment
college /ˈkɒlɪdʒ/ B1	noun - an institution for higher education
trust /trʌst/ A2	verb - to believe that someone is good and honest noun - firm belief in the reliability of someone or something
drop /drɒp/ A2	verb - to fall or allow something to fall
work /wɜːrk/ A1	verb - to do a job that is usually paid noun - activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result
start /stɑːrt/ A1	verb - to begin something noun - the point in time or space at which something begins
love /lʌv/ A1	verb - to have a great affection for someone or something noun - a strong feeling of deep affection
find /faɪnd/ A1	verb - to discover by chance or effort
heart /hɑːrt/ A2	noun - the organ that pumps blood around the body
fired /ˈfaɪərd/ B1	adjective - having been dismissed from a job
best /bɛst/ A1	adjective - of the most excellent or desirable type or quality
creative /kriˈeɪtɪv/ B1	adjective - involving the use of imagination or original ideas
cancer /ˈkænsər/ B2	noun - a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body
death /dɛθ/ B1	noun - the end of life
stay /steɪ/ A1	verb - to remain in the same place or condition
hungry /ˈhʌŋɡri/ A2	adjective - wanting or needing food
foolish /ˈfuːlɪʃ/ B1	adjective - lacking good sense or judgment

Key Grammar Structures

• thank you I'm honored to be with you

  ➔ Present continuous (casual contraction)

  ➔ "I'm honored" uses the present continuous to express a current state of being honored, avoiding the full form for a casual tone.

• 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

  ➔ Passive voice (to be)

  ➔ "was all set" and "to be adopted" illustrate the passive voice, where the subject receives the action rather than performing 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

  ➔ Future in the past (going to)

  ➔ "was going to" expresses a future action from a past perspective, indicating a planned outcome based on past expectations.

• it was one of the best decisions I ever made

  ➔ Past perfect with superlative

  ➔ "I ever made" uses the past perfect with a superlative to emphasize a past action among others that stands out.

• you can only connect them looking backwards so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future

  ➔ Parallel structure with adverbial phrases

  ➔ "looking forward" and "looking backwards" create parallel structure for contrast, emphasizing the view on time.

• I got fired how can you get fired from a company you started

  ➔ Rhetorical question inversion

  ➔ "how can you get fired" inverts subject and auxiliary for emphasis in a rhetorical question.

• I still loved what I did the turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit

  ➔ Cleft sentence (it would be... that)

  ➔ "not changed that one bit" uses an idiom with emphasis on negation via cleft-like structure.

• 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

  ➔ Past modal (could have + past participle)

  ➔ "could have ever happened" expresses a hypothetical past possibility, emphasizing the unexpected benefit.

• of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward

  ➔ Gerund phrase as adverbial

  ➔ "looking forward" serves as an adverbial gerund phrase, modifying the impossibility.

• stay hungry stay foolish

  ➔ Imperative mood (parallel commands)

  ➔ "stay hungry stay foolish" uses imperatives in parallel to give direct advice or exhortation.