大概一年以前, 我被診斷出癌症。我在早晨七點半做了一個檢查, 檢查清楚的顯示在我的胰腺有一個腫瘤。我當時都不知道胰腺是什麼東西。醫生告訴我那很可能是一種無法治癒的癌症, 我還有三到六個月的時間活在這個世界上。我的醫生叫我回家, 然後整理好我的一切, 那就是醫生準備死亡的程式。那意味著你將要把未來十年對你小孩說的話在幾個月裡面說完.；那意味著把每件事情都搞定, 讓你的家人會儘可能輕鬆的生活；那意味著你要說“再見了”。
i lived 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 doctors 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 i'm fine now.
我整天和那個診斷書一起生活。後來有一天早上我作了一個活切片檢查，醫生將一個內窺鏡從我的喉嚨伸進去,通過我的胃, 然後進入我的腸子, 用一根針在我的胰腺上的腫瘤上取了幾個細胞。我當時很鎮靜,因為我被注射了鎮定劑。但是我的妻子在那裡, 後來告訴我，當醫生在顯微鏡地下觀察這些細胞的時候他們開始尖叫, 因為這些細胞最後竟然是一種非常罕見的可以用手術治癒的胰腺癌症。我做了這個手術, 現在我痊癒了。
this was the closest i've been to facing death, and i hope its 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:
那是我最接近死亡的時候, 我還希望這也是以後的幾十年最接近的一次。從死亡線上又活了過來, 死亡對我來說，只是一個有用但是純粹是知識上的概念的時候，我可以更肯定一點地對你們說：
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 is life's change agent. it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
沒有人願意死, 即使人們想上天堂, 人們也不會為了去那裡而死。但是死亡是我們每個人共同的終點。從來沒有人能夠逃脫它。也應該如此。因為死亡就是生命中最好的一個發明。它將舊的清除以便給新的讓路。你們現在是新的, 但是從現在開始不久以後, 你們將會逐漸的變成舊的然後被清除。我很抱歉這很戲劇性, 但是這十分的真實。
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 other's 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.
你們的時間很有限, 所以不要將他們浪費在重複其他人的生活上。不要被教條束縛,那意味著你和其他人思考的結果一起生活。不要被其他人喧囂的觀點掩蓋你真正的內心的聲音。還有最重要的是, 你要有勇氣去聽從你直覺和心靈的指示——它們在某種程度上知道你想要成為什麼樣子，所有其他的事情都是次要的。
when i was young, there was an amazing publication called the whole earth catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. it was created by a fellow named stewart brand not far from here in menlo park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. this was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. it was sort of like google in paperback form, 35 years before google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.