介绍:
Building Our Life
A university professor started off his class by picking out of his back pocket a 20-pound note. And in this lecture hall of about 200 people he asked, “How many of you would like this note? “Naturally, all 200 hands went up.
He said,“Interesting.” He then said, “Before I let you have it, let me ask you this question.” He took the note and folded it in half twice, and then he said, “How many of you want this note?” Still 200 hands went up. Now he said, “Let me try something else.”
He took the note and he crumpled it. And he said, “How many of you want this note now?” Still 200 hands went up. Finally he chucked the note on the floor. He screwed it with his shoe and crumpled it even more, picked it back up, now with dirt, and said, “How many of you want this note?
“All 200 hands were still up. He said, “Today, you’ve learned an important lesson. No matter how much I crumpled that note, how much I scrunched it up, how many times it was trodden on, you still wanted it, because it was still worth 20-pounds.”In the same way that that 20-pound note held its value, so do you.”
No matter how many times life will tread on you, life will crumple you, life will scrunch you, and life will squeeze you, you will always keep your value, that spark within us all of bliss, knowledge, and eternity that exists, that spark will never be taken away. Our value is not created by the price of our clothes or our bank balance or the job title that we have. See, we should be building life and not just building our CVs (curriculum vitae).
【参考译文】
一位大学教授在上课的一开始，从背包里拿出了一张 20 英镑的钞票。在大约 200 多人的教室里，他问大家：“有谁想要这张钞票？” 很自然地，所有都举起了手。他说：“有意思。” 他接着说：“在把钞票给你们之前，让我问你们一个问题。” 他将钞票对折、再对折。然后说：“有谁想要这张钞票？” 同样的，大家依旧举起了手。他又说：“那换这样试试看。” 这次他将手里的钞票揉成了团。然后问大家，“有谁想要这张钞票？” 一样，所有人都举起了手。最后他将纸钞扔在了地上，用脚把它踩得更皱，再捡起来，现在钞票是脏的。然后又问了一次“有谁想要这张钞票？” 结果大家依旧都举起了手。于是他说“今天你们学到了很重要的一课。无论我怎样折这张钞票、怎样揉它、踩它，你们还是想要它，是因为它还是价值 20 英镑。其实，每个人的价值就像这张钞票一样。” 无论人生如何践踏你、蹂躏你、糟蹋你、压榨你，你永远不会失去你的人生价值。潜藏于体内的，那喜悦、知识、永恒所闪耀的火光，那火光永远都不会熄灭。我们的价值并非由穿多少钱的衣服或银行存款或是工作职称来决定。我们应该丰富的是人生阅历，而不是履历。
In the middle of 2009, he was a software engineer that no one wanted to hire. He 12 years of experience at Yahoo, but he was rejected by Facebook and then rejected by Twitter. He’d been to a great university. He had a great CV. But he decided to team up with one of his alumni members at Yahoo and started to create an app and focus on the start-up space. In five years’ time, he sold that app for $19 billion to Facebook. Believe it or not, that was Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp. When he was rejected from Facebook, he said it was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people and look forward to life’s next adventure. When he was rejected by Twitter, he responded by saying, “Worked out, it was quite a long commute.” It’s so interesting to see that someone rejected from two of the top Internet companies actually responded with humor and actually responded with positivity. This lady was diagnosed with clinical depression. Her marriage had failed, and she was jobless with a dependent child. She was on a four-hour delayed train journey from Manchester to London when she came up with this idea. And she started to write this book about this wizard. And as she started writing, she then finished her manuscript, took it to 12 publishers, and was rejected by all 12. Believe it or not, that’s J.K.Rowling. This man watched his first company crumble. He was a Harvard University dropout, and his first company’s demo didn’t even work. He went on to build Microsoft. His name’s Bill Gates.
在 2009 年的中旬，他还是个没人想要雇佣的软件工程师。他在雅虎工作了 12 年，但脸书与推特却先后拒绝了他。他从优秀的大学毕业，拥有漂亮的履历。但他决定和之前的雅虎同事们，一起制作一款 APP，并专注于新创公司共同工作空间。在五年后，他以 190 亿美金卖给了脸书。信不信由你，这个人就是 WhatsApp 的共同创始人 Brian Acton。当他去脸书应聘被拒绝时，他说：“那是能够拓展人脉的好机会，并且期待下一次的冒险。”当他被推特拒绝时，他的反应是：“没关系，上班地点也有点远。”很能得可以看出被两家顶尖网络公司拒绝，还能够以如此幽默又正面的方式来面对。这位女士被诊断出有严重的抑郁症。她的婚姻失败，没有工作，还要抚养孩子。她在一班误点四小时，从曼彻斯特开往伦敦的列车上，突然有了灵感。她想写一本有关巫师的书。当她开始写作、完成手稿后，带着手稿找了 12 家出版社，12 家出版社都拒绝了。信不信由你，这就是 J.K.罗琳的事迹。这名男子看着自己的第一间公司倒闭。他从哈佛大学辍学。他的第一间公司的展示机还是失败品。后来他创建了微软。他的名字叫比尔盖茨。
Therefore, failure is just a sign that we need to widen our scope. We need to be ready and build ourselves up for the next level. Actually, what we end up achieving is far greater than what we’d envisioned for ourselves. And this divine plan, this orchestration can’t be happening without this intervention that occurs, because if we had it our way, we’d just settle. We’d just accept what we thought was our goal, what we thought we were chasing. But actually, I’ve noticed that when you don’t get that, later down the line you look back and you reflect and realize that what you’ve gained is so much greater. Failures are only failures when we don’t learn from them, because when you learn from them, they become lessons. And we actually extrapolate all of these teachings and actually get more insight into how we can improve the way we work and how we can actually drive with a different energy. The challenge we have is that we only talk about people’s failures when they succeed. And that’s why they become this taboo or we feel like their failures never happened. We need to share these stories earlier. We need to bring out these stories and experiences on the journey so that people who are on the journey can actually follow in those footsteps. And that’s why Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots moving forward. You only can when you’re looking backwards.”
所以，失败只是一种信号。他告诉我们应该拓展自己的视野，我们必须为更上一层楼养精蓄锐。事实上，我们最后的成就远远超过自己的想象。而所谓上帝的旨意、命运，如果没有失败的介入也不会发生。因为如果一切都尽如人意，我们将会欣然的接受我们所以为的目标，我们所以为自己所追求的东西。但事实上我发现，当你失败了，回过头来反省时，你会发现自己得到了更多。如果你不从失败中学习，失败终究是失败。当你从失败中吸取教训，失败就成为人生的课程。我们也能从这些教训中举一反三，并能够更了解如何改进我们的工作方式，以崭新的能量向前推进。问题在于，我们只在别人成功后谈论别人的失败，以致于那成为某种禁忌，或是让人误以为他们没失败过。我们必须及早分享这些人生的故事，应该分享这些人生旅途上的种种阅历和经验，让后人能够跟随前人的脚步。所以，乔布斯才这么说：“人生经历无法在眺望未来时连接，只能在回首过去时。”
