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:
但是這並不是那么羅曼蒂克。我失去了我的宿舍,所以我只能在朋友房間的地板上面睡覺,我去撿5美分的可樂瓶子，僅僅為了填飽肚子, 在星期天的晚上,我需要走七英里的路程，穿過這個城市到hare krishna寺廟（註：位於紐約brooklyn下城）,只是為了能吃上飯——這個星期唯一一頓好一點的飯。但是我喜歡這樣。我跟著我的直覺和好奇心走, 遇到的很多東西,此後被證明是無價之寶。讓我給你們舉一個例子吧：
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.
reed大學在那時提供也許是全美最好的美術字課程。在這個大學裡面的每個海報, 每個抽屜的標籤上面全都是漂亮的美術字。因為我退學了, 沒有受到正規的訓練, 所以我決定去參加這個課程，去學學怎樣寫出漂亮的美術字。我學到了san serif 和serif字型, 我學會了怎么樣在不同的字母組合之中改變空格的長度, 還有怎么樣才能作出最棒的印刷式樣。那是一種科學永遠不能捕捉到的、美麗的、真實的藝術精妙, 我發現那實在是太美妙了。
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.
當時看起來這些東西在我的生命中，好像都沒有什麼實際套用的可能。但是十年之後,當我們在設計第一台macintosh電腦的時候,就不是那樣了。我把當時我學的那些傢伙全都設計進了mac。那是第一台使用了漂亮的印刷字型的電腦。如果我當時沒有退學, 就不會有機會去參加這個我感興趣的美術字課程, mac就不會有這么多豐富的字型，以及賞心悅目的字型間距。那么現在個人電腦就不會有現在這么美妙的字型了。當然我在大學的時候，還不可能把從前的點點滴滴串連起來,但是當我十年後回顧這一切的時候,真的豁然開朗了。
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.
再次說明的是,你在向前展望的時候不可能將這些片斷串連起來；你只能在回顧的時候將點點滴滴串連起來。所以你必須相信這些片斷會在你未來的某一天串連起來。你必須要相信某些東西：你的勇氣、目的、生命、因緣。這個過程從來沒有令我失望（let me down）,只是讓我的生命更加地與眾不同而已。