以下這篇由應屆畢業生演講稿網站整理提供的是《阿凡達》、《鐵達尼號》的導演詹姆斯·卡梅隆(james cameron)的一篇ted演講。在這個演講里，卡梅隆回顧了自己從電影學院畢業後走上導演道路的故事。卡梅隆告訴你，不要畏懼失敗，永遠不要給自己設限。更多演講稿範文，歡迎訪問應屆畢業生演講稿網站!
i grew up on a steady diet of science fiction. in high school, i took a bus to school an hour each way every day. and i was always absorbed in a book, science fiction book, which took my mind to other worlds, and satisfied, in a narrative form, this insatiable sense of curiosity that i had.
and you know, that curiosity also manifested itself in the fact that whenever i wasn't in school i was out in the woods, hiking and taking "samples" -- frogs and snakes and bugs and pond water -- and bringing it back, looking at it under the microscope. you know, i was a real science geek. but it was all about trying to understand the world, understand the limits of possibility.
and my love of science fiction actually seemed mirrored in the world around me, because what was happening, this was in the late '60s, we were going to the moon, we were exploring the deep oceans.jacques cousteau was coming into our living rooms with his amazing specials that showed us animals and places and a wondrous world that we could never really have previously imagined. so, that seemed to resonate with the whole science fiction part of it.
and i was an artist. i could draw. i could paint. and i found that because there weren't video gamesand this saturation of cg movies and all of this imagery in the media landscape, i had to create these images in my head. you know, we all did, as kids having to read a book, and through the author's description, put something on the movie screen in our heads. and so, my response to this was to paint, to draw alien creatures, alien worlds, robots, spaceships, all that stuff. i was endlessly getting busted in math class doodling behind the textbook. that was -- the creativity had to find its outlet somehow.
and an interesting thing happened: the jacques cousteau shows actually got me very excited about the fact that there was an alien world right here on earth. i might not really go to an alien world on a spaceship someday -- that seemed pretty darn unlikely. but that was a world i could really go to, right here on earth, that was as rich and exotic as anything that i had imagined from reading these books.
so, i decided i was going to become a scuba diver at the age of 15. and the only problem with that was that i lived in a little village in canada, 600 miles from the nearest ocean. but i didn't let that daunt me. i pestered my father until he finally found a scuba class in buffalo, new york, right across the border from where we live. and i actually got certified in a pool at a ymca in the dead of winter in buffalo, new york. and i didn't see the ocean, a real ocean, for another two years, until we moved to california.
since then, in the intervening 40 years, i've spent about 3,000 hours underwater, and 500 hours of that was in submersibles. and i've learned that that deep-ocean environment, and even the shallow oceans,are so rich with amazing life that really is beyond our imagination. nature's imagination is so boundlesscompared to our own meager human imagination. i still, to this day, stand in absolute awe of what i see when i make these dives. and my love affair with the ocean is ongoing, and just as strong as it ever was.
but when i chose a career as an adult, it was filmmaking. and that seemed to be the best way to reconcile this urge i had to tell stories with my urges to create images. and i was, as a kid, constantly drawing comic books, and so on. so, filmmaking was the way to put pictures and stories together, and that made sense. and of course the stories that i chose to tell were science fiction stories: "terminator," "aliens" and "the abyss." and with "the abyss," i was putting together my love of underwater and diving with filmmaking. so, you know, merging the two passions.
something interesting came out of "the abyss," which was that to solve a specific narrative problem on that film, which was to create this kind of liquid water creature, we actually embraced computer generated animation, cg. and this resulted in the first soft-surface character, cg animation that was ever in a movie. and even though the film didn't make any money -- barely broke even, i should say -- i witnessed something amazing, which is that the audience, the global audience, was mesmerized by this apparent magic.
you know, it's arthur clarke's law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. they were seeing something magical. and so that got me very excited. and i thought, "wow, this is something that needs to be embraced into the cinematic art." so, with "terminator 2," which was my next film, we took that much farther. working with ilm, we created the liquid metal dude in that film. the success hung in the balance on whether that effect would work. and it did, and we created magic again, and we had the same result with an audience -- although we did make a little more money on that one.
so, drawing a line through those two dots of experience came to, "this is going to be a whole new world," this was a whole new world of creativity for film artists. so, i started a company with stan winston, my good friend stan winston, who is the premier make-up and creature designer at that time, and it was called digital domain. and the concept of the company was that we would leapfrog past the analog processes of optical printers and so on, and we would go right to digital production. and we actually did that and it gave us a competitive advantage for a while.
but we found ourselves lagging in the mid '90s in the creature and character design stuff that we had actually founded the company to do. so, i wrote this piece called "avatar," which was meant to absolutely push the envelope of visual effects, of cg effects, beyond, with realistic human emotive characters generated in cg, and the main characters would all be in cg, and the world would be in cg. and the envelope pushed back, and i was told by the folks at my company that we weren't going to be able to do this for a while.
so, i shelved it, and i made this other movie about a big ship that sinks. (laughter) you know, i went and pitched it to the studio as "'romeo and juliet' on a ship: "it's going to be this epic romance,passionate film." secretly, what i wanted to do was i wanted to dive to the real wreck of "titanic." and that's why i made the movie. (applause) and that's the truth. now, the studio didn't know that. but i convinced them. i said, "we're going to dive to the wreck. we're going to film it for real. we'll be using it in the opening of the film. it will be really important. it will be a great marketing hook." and i talked them into funding an expedition. (laughter)
sounds crazy. but this goes back to that theme about your imagination creating a reality. because we actually created a reality where six months later, i find myself in a russian submersible two and a half miles down in the north atlantic, looking at the real titanic through a view port. not a movie, not hd -- for real. (applause)
now, that blew my mind. and it took a lot of preparation, we had to build cameras and lights and all kinds of things. but, it struck me how much this dive, these deep dives, was like a space mission. you know, where it was highly technical, and it required enormous planning. you get in this capsule, you go down to this dark hostile environment where there is no hope of rescue if you can't get back by yourself. and i thought like, "wow. i'm like, living in a science fiction movie. this is really cool."
and so, i really got bitten by the bug of deep-ocean exploration. of course, the curiosity, the science component of it -- it was everything. it was adventure, it was curiosity, it was imagination. and it was an experience that hollywood couldn't give me. because, you know, i could imagine a creature and we could create a visual effect for it. but i couldn't imagine what i was seeing out that window. as we did some of our subsequent expeditions, i was seeing creatures at hydrothermal vents and sometimes things that i had never seen before, sometimes things that no one had seen before, that actually were not described by science at the time that we saw them and imaged them.
so, i was completely smitten by this, and had to do more. and so, i actually made a kind of curious decision. after the success of "titanic," i said, "ok, i'm going to park my day job as a hollywood movie maker, and i'm going to go be a full-time explorer for a while." and so, we started planning theseexpeditions. and we wound up going to the bismark, and exploring it with robotic vehicles. we went back to the titanic wreck. we took little bots that we had created that spooled a fiber optic. and the idea was to go in and do an interior survey of that ship, which had never been done. nobody had ever looked inside the wreck. they didn't have the means to do it, so we created technology to do it.
so, you know, here i am now, on the deck of titanic, sitting in a submersible, and looking out at planks that look much like this, where i knew that the band had played. and i'm flying a little robotic vehiclethrough the corridor of the ship. when i say, "i'm operating it," but my mind is in the vehicle. i felt like i was physically present inside the shipwreck of titanic. and it was the most surreal kind of deja vu experience i've ever had, because i would know before i turned a corner what was going to be there before the lights of the vehicle actually revealed it, because i had walked the set for months when we were making the movie. and the set was based as an exact replica on the blueprints of the ship.
so, it was this absolutely remarkable experience. and it really made me realize that the telepresence experience -- that you actually can have these robotic avatars, then your consciousness is injected into the vehicle, into this other form of existence. it was really, really quite profound. and it may be a little bit of a glimpse as to what might be happening some decades out as we start to have cyborg bodies for exploration or for other means in many sort of post-human futures that i can imagine, as a science fiction fan.
so, having done these expeditions, and really beginning to appreciate what was down there, such as at the deep ocean vents where we had these amazing, amazing animals -- they're basically aliens right here on earth. they live in an environment of chemosynthesis. they don't survive on sunlight-basedsystem the way we do. and so, you're seeing animals that are living next to a 500-degree-centigradewater plumes. you think they can't possibly exist.
at the same time i was getting very interested in space science as well -- again, it's the science fiction influence, as a kid. and i wound up getting involved with the space community, really involved with nasa, sitting on the nasa advisory board, planning actual space missions, going to russia, going through the pre-cosmonaut biomedical protocols, and all these sorts of things, to actually go and fly to the international space station with our 3d camera systems. and this was fascinating. but what i wound up doing was bringing space scientists with us into the deep. and taking them down so that they had access -- astrobiologists, planetary scientists, people who were interested in these extreme environments -- taking them down to the vents, and letting them see, and take samples and test instruments, and so on.
so, here we were making documentary films, but actually doing science, and actually doing space science. i'd completely closed the loop between being the science fiction fan, you know, as a kid, and doing this stuff for real. and you know, along the way in this journey of discovery, i learned a lot. i learned a lot about science. but i also learned a lot about leadership. now you think director has got to be a leader, leader of, captain of the ship, and all that sort of thing.
i didn't really learn about leadership until i did these expeditions. because i had to, at a certain point, say, "what am i doing out here? why am i doing this? what do i get out of it?" we don't make money at these damn shows. we barely break even. there is no fame in it. people sort of think i went awaybetween "titanic" and "avatar" and was buffing my nails someplace, sitting at the beach. made all these films, made all these documentary films for a very limited audience.
no fame, no glory, no money. what are you doing? you're doing it for the task itself, for the challenge --and the ocean is the most challenging environment there is -- for the thrill of discovery, and for that strange bond that happens when a small group of people form a tightly knit team. because we would do these things with 10, 12 people, working for years at a time, sometimes at sea for two, three months at a time.
and in that bond, you realize that the most important thing is the respect that you have for them and that they have for you, that you've done a task that you can't explain to someone else. when you come back to the shore and you say, "we had to do this, and the fiber optic, and the attentuation, and the this and the that, all the technology of it, and the difficulty, the human-performance aspects of working at sea," you can't explain it to people. it's that thing that maybe cops have, or people in combat that have gone through something together and they know they can never explain it. creates a bond, creates a bond of respect.
so, when i came back to make my next movie, which was "avatar," i tried to apply that same principle of leadership, which is that you respect your team, and you earn their respect in return. and it really changed the dynamic. so, here i was again with a small team, in uncharted territory, doing "avatar," coming up with new technology that didn't exist before. tremendously exciting. tremendously challenging. and we became a family, over a four-and-half year period. and it completely changed how i do movies. so, people have commented on how, "well, you know, you brought back the ocean organisms and put them on the planet of pandora." to me, it was more of a fundamental way of doing business, the process itself, that changed as a result of that.
so, what can we synthesize out of all this? you know, what are the lessons learned? well, i think number one is curiosity. it's the most powerful thing you own. imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. and the respect of your team is more important than all the laurels in the world. i have young filmmakers come up to me and say, "give me some advice for doing this." and i say, "don't put limitations on yourself. other people will do that for you -- don't do it to yourself, don't bet against yourself, and take risks."
nasa has this phrase that they like: "failure is not an option." but failure has to be an option in art and in exploration, because it's a leap of faith. and no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. you have to be willing to take those risks. so, that's the thought i would leave you with, is that in whatever you're doing, failure is an option, but fear is not. thank you. (applause)
譯文：我是看科幻小說長大的。高中時，我連坐校車上下學時都在讀著科幻小說。這些書將我帶到另一個世界，滿足了我無止境的好奇。每當我在學校，我總是在樹叢中尋找一些“標本”——青蛙、蛇、昆蟲……我把它們放在顯微鏡下觀察。我總是試圖認知這個世界，想找到它可能的邊界。
我對科幻小說的熱愛或許是那個時代的寫照。60年代末期，人類登上了月球，去了深海。通過電視，我們看到了不同的動物和地方。這都是我們不曾想像的。這種氛圍中，我不知不覺地喜歡上了科幻小說。
每當我看完小說，故事中的影像就會在我腦海中不斷放映。或許是因為創造力必須找到一個發泄方式，我開始畫外星人、機器人、飛船……我甚至會在數學課上在課本的背面畫畫。
對科幻小說的不斷接觸讓我想到：外星人不一定生存在外太空，他們很有可能就生活在我們星球上。所以15歲時，我決定成為一個潛水員。而當時實現夢想唯一的問題是我生活在加拿大的一個小山村，離最近的海有6英里遠。
但我父親並沒有讓這成為我夢想的障礙，他在邊境對岸的美國紐約州布法羅找到了一個潛水培訓班。於是我便在布法羅的一個泳池裡獲得了潛水證書。直到兩年後，當我們全家搬到加州，我才第一次有機會真正地潛水。
在這之後的40年裡，我在海底大約總共花了3萬個小時。大海如此豐富多彩，眾多神奇的生物生活其中。比起我們的想像力，自然的想像力完全沒有邊界。我想，至今我對大海的了解還是很少，但我對海洋的好奇卻一直延續著。
電影魔法師與科學體驗
但長大後，我並沒有成為一名潛水員，我選擇的職業是電影。我喜歡講故事，畫圖畫，電影看起來是最合適的工作。當然，我講述的故事都是科幻的——終結者、外星人等等。
我也將我對潛水的熱愛和電影融合在了一起。拍攝《深淵》時，我有了一些有趣的想法。當我們要塑造一個水狀的生物時，我們使用了“計算機生成動畫”——cg。cg的套用產生了電影歷史上第一個軟表面、電腦製成的形象。雖然這部電影使公司差點虧本，但全世界的觀眾被這種新技術所震撼。
根據亞瑟·克拉克定律——任何高難度的技術和魔法沒有什麼區別，很多人覺得自己看到了一些“神奇”的東西。這使我感到很興奮。我想cg應該被用到電影藝術中去。
所以，在我接下來的電影《終結者2》中，我把這種技術又推近了一步，創造了一個金屬人。我又變了一次魔術。這部電影很成功，我們賺了一些錢。
作為一個電影人，我看到了一個全新的世界，一個全新的未來。於是我和好友斯坦·溫斯頓創立了一家公司，叫做“數領域”。公司的概念是要跳過普通的電影製作直接進入數電影製作。我們也是這么做的，這也使得我們在一段時間內有了一定的優勢。但在90年代中期，我發現我們有些落後了。
我寫《阿凡達》這部電影，就是想要推動整個視覺體驗以及動畫效果的進步。讓電影人物跳出人們想像的框架，完全用動畫效果詮釋人物表情。但一開始，員工告訴我，他們還沒有能力做到。於是我把《阿凡達》放在了一邊，轉而製作了另一部電影——《鐵達尼號》。
在為《鐵達尼號》尋找投資商時，我告訴製作人這是一部關於愛情的電影。它的故事就像羅密歐與朱麗葉一樣悽美動人。而事實上，我自己真正想做的是，潛入海底探尋真正的鐵達尼號。這是我的真心話，電影公司並不知道。
我告訴他們，我們要沉入海底，拍攝鐵達尼號真實的畫面。我們將把這個片段放在首映式上展現，這將會引起很大的轟動，票房也會很好。令人意外，電影公司真的同意出錢，支持我去探索鐵達尼號。
雖然到現在我仍覺得有些瘋狂，但這就是“想像創造了現實”。兩個月後，我在北大西洋的一艘俄羅斯潛艇里用肉眼看到真正的鐵達尼號。
《鐵達尼號》的拍攝體驗給我很大震撼。雖然我們要做很多準備工作，但令我震驚的是，這次深海拍攝就像是一次外太空旅行——尖端的科技，繁雜的計畫，環境的危險，我仿佛置身於一本科幻小說中。
我發現我們可以想像一個生物，但是我想我永遠無法想像出透過潛艇窗所看到的那些生物。我看見了一些我從未看見的東西，也看見了一些從來沒有被人看見過的東西，因為當我們拍下它們時，他們還沒有被科學所描述。我被震撼了。我必須做更多。
在《鐵達尼號》成功後，我做了一個決定：暫停我的主業——好萊塢導演，做一段時間全職探險家。於是我們開始策劃一些探險。在自動探測車幫助下，我們去了些危險的地方。我們發明了技術，對鐵達尼號殘骸做了一次全面勘測，使它再次重現在人們面前。
通過一種會飛行的自動探測儀，我可以坐在一個潛艇里探索鐵達尼號的內部。當我在操作儀器時，我的腦子就像是在這些探測儀中。我感覺我自己真的到了鐵達尼號上。這是一種最令人興奮的似曾相識的感覺。我知道假如我在這裡轉個彎，我將會看到什麼。因為我已經在另一個完全一樣的鐵達尼號複製品上工作了好幾個月。
這是一次不同尋常的體驗。它讓我感覺到，遠程監控的能量。你的意識可以被注入這些機器或注入另一種存在中。這種體驗非常深刻。或許幾十年後，當半機器人出現，或者任何後人類生物出現時，人們會對這種感覺習以為常。
在這些探險之後，我開始真正感謝這些存在於海底的生物。這些生物基本上對於我們來說就是外星生物。它們生活在一個化學合成的環境之中。它們無法像我們一樣存活於太陽之下。同時，從小被科幻小說影響的我對於太空科學也非常感興趣。
我進入了nasa的顧問委員會，策劃真正的太空行程，讓太空人帶著3d攝像機進入太空站。這些非常有趣，但我真正想做的是將這些太空專家帶入深海，讓他們看看深海，取一些樣本。所以我們既做了紀錄片，也在做科學。這些事業將我整個人生很好地整合了起來。
發現團隊的力量
在發現的旅途中，我學到了很多。我學到的不僅僅是科學知識，還有領導力。很多人以為作為導演，就一定具有很高的領導力。但我卻是從這些探險中學到如何帶領團隊。
在探險時，有時候我會問自己，我為什麼會在這裡?為什麼要做這些紀錄片? 我從中得到了什麼? 我們並沒有從這些紀錄片中賺錢，還差點虧了本。我也沒有賺到名聲。很多人以為我在《鐵達尼號》之後就一直躺在沙灘邊享受。
那我在做什麼呢?我做這些其實只是為了這件任務本身。為了挑戰——海洋是現存最危險的環境;為了發現;也為了一種奇怪的關係——一個由很少人組成的緊密團隊。我們這10到12個人在一起工作了很多年。有時要在海里一起工作2到3個月。
在這種關係中，我發現最重要的東西就是尊重。我在這裡為了你，你在這裡為了我。每個人做的工作都無法向其他人解釋。我們必須建立起一種關係，建立尊重。
當我開始拍攝《阿凡達》時，我試著將這種互相尊重的領導力原則套用在電影拍攝中。很快情況就改變了。在《阿凡達》拍攝過程中，我的團隊也很小，也在未知領地工作，創造新的科技，這非常有意思，非常有挑戰。四年半時間，我們成為了一個家庭。這完全改變了我以前拍電影的方式。
有評論文章說，卡梅隆把海底的一些生物放到了潘多拉星球上是其影片成功的原因，而對於我來說，做事的基本法則以及過程本身改變了事情的結果。
最後，總結一下。我學到了什麼?
第一：好奇心，這是你擁有的最重要的東西;
第二：想像力，這是你創造現實最重要的力量;
第三：對團隊的尊重，這是比世界上其他定律更重要的定律。
有不少年輕電影導演向我討教成功經驗，我對他們說：“不要給自己劃定界限。別人會為你去劃邊界，但你自己千萬別去。你要去冒險。失敗是你其中一個選項，但畏懼不是。從來沒有一次探險是在有完全安全保障的情況下完成的。你必須願意承擔這些風險。”謝謝大家!(掌聲)
one day in 1819, 3,000 miles off the coast of chile, in one of the most remote regions of the pacific ocean, 20 american sailors watched their ship flood with seawater.
1819年的某一天， 在距離智利海岸3000英里的地方， 有一個太平洋上的最偏遠的水域， 20名美國船員目睹了他們的船隻進水的場面。
they'd been struck by a sperm whale, which had ripped a catastrophic hole in the ship's hull. as their ship began to sink beneath the swells, the men huddled together in three small whaleboats.
他們和一頭抹香鯨相撞，給船體撞了 一個毀滅性的大洞。 當船在巨浪中開始沉沒時， 人們在三條救生小艇中抱作一團。
these men were 10,000 miles from home, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest scrap of land. in their small boats, they carried only rudimentary navigational equipment and limited supplies of food and water.
這些人在離家10000萬英里的地方， 離最近的陸地也超過1000英里。 在他們的小艇中，他們只帶了 落後的導航設備 和有限的食物和飲水。
these were the men of the whaleship essex, whose story would later inspire parts of "moby dick."
他們就是捕鯨船essex上的人們， 後來的他們的故事成為《白鯨記》的一部分。
even in today's world, their situation would be really dire, but think about how much worse it would have been then.
即使在當今的世界，碰上這種情況也夠杯具的，更不用說在當時的情況有多糟糕。
no one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong. no search party was coming to look for these men. so most of us have never experienced a situation as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves, but we all know what it's like to be afraid.
岸上的人根本就還沒意識到出了什麼問題。 沒有任何人來搜尋他們。 我們當中大部分人沒有經歷過 這些船員所處的可怕情景， 但我們都知道害怕是什麼感覺。
we know how fear feels, but i'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean.
我們知道恐懼的感覺， 但是我不能肯定我們會花很多時間想過 我們的恐懼到底意味著什麼。
as we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates.
我們長大以後，我們總是會被鼓勵把恐懼 視為軟弱，需要像乳牙或輪滑鞋一樣 扔掉的幼稚的東西。
and i think it's no accident that we think this way. neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists.
我想意外事故並非我們所想的那樣。 神經系統科學家已經知道人類 生來就是樂觀主義者。
so maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "don't worry," we like to say to one another. "don't panic." in english, fear is something we conquer. it's something we fight.
這也許就是為什麼我們認為有時候恐懼， 本身就是一種危險或帶來危險。 “不要愁。”我們總是對別人說。“不要慌”。 英語中，恐懼是我們需要征服的東西。 是我們必須對抗的東西，是我們必須克服的東西。
it's something we overcome. but what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? what if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself?
但是我們如果換個視角看恐懼會如何呢? 如果我們把恐懼當做是想像力的一個驚人成果， 是和我們講故事一樣 精妙而有見地的東西，又會如何呢?
it's easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination in young children, whose fears are often extraordinarily vivid.
在小孩子當中，我們最容易看到恐懼與想像之間的聯繫， 他們的恐懼經常是超級生動的。
when i was a child, i lived in california, which is, you know, mostly a very nice place to live, but for me as a child, california could also be a little scary.
我小時候住在加利福尼亞， 你們都知道，是非常適合居住的位置， 但是對一個小孩來說，加利福尼亞也會有點嚇人。
i remember how frightening it was to see the chandelier that hung above our dining table swing back and forth during every minor earthquake, and i sometimes couldn't sleep at night, terrified that the big one might strike while we were sleeping.
我記得每次小地震的時候 當我看到我們餐桌上的吊燈 晃來晃去的時候是多么的嚇人， 我經常會徹夜難眠，擔心大地震 會在我們睡覺的時候突然襲來。
and what we say about kids who have fears like that is that they have a vivid imagination. but at a certain point, most of us learn to leave these kinds of visions behind and grow up.
我們說小孩子感受到這種恐懼 是因為他們有生動的想像力。 但是在某個時候，我們大多數學會了 拋棄這種想法而變得成熟。
we learn that there are no monsters hiding under the bed, and not every earthquake brings buildings down. but maybe it's no coincidence that some of our most creative minds fail to leave these kinds of fears behind as adults.
我們都知道床下沒有魔鬼， 也不是每個地震都會震垮房子。但是我們當中最有想像力的人們 並沒有因為成年而拋棄這種恐懼，這也許並不是巧合。
the same incredible imaginations that produced "the origin of species," "jane eyre" and "the remembrance of things past," also generated intense worries that haunted the adult lives of charles darwin, charlotte brontĂŤ and marcel proust. so the question is, what can the rest of us learn about fear from visionaries and young children?
同樣不可思議的想像力創造了《物種起源》， 《簡·愛》和《追憶似水年華》， 也就是這種與生俱來的深深的擔憂一直纏繞著成年的 查爾斯·達爾文， 夏洛特·勃朗特和馬塞爾·普羅斯特。 問題就來了， 我們其他人如何能從這些 夢想家和小孩子身上學會恐懼?
well let's return to the year 1819 for a moment, to the situation facing the crew of the whaleship essex. let's take a look at the fears that their imaginations were generating as they drifted in the middle of the pacific.
讓我們暫時回到1819年， 回到essex捕鯨船的水手們面對的情況。 讓我們看看他們漂流在太平洋中央時 他們的想像力給他們帶來的恐懼感覺。
twenty-four hours had now passed since the capsizing of the ship. the time had come for the men to make a plan, but they had very few options.
船傾覆後已經過了24個小時。 這時人們制定了一個計畫， 但是其實他們沒什麼太多的選擇。
in his fascinating account of the disaster, nathaniel philbrick wrote that these men were just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on earth.
在納撒尼爾·菲爾布里克(nathaniel philbrick)描述這場災難的 動人文章中，他寫到“這些人離陸地如此之遠， 似乎永遠都不可能到達地球上的任何一塊陸地。”
the men knew that the nearest islands they could reach were the marquesas islands, 1,200 miles away. but they'd heard some frightening rumors.
這些人知道離他們最近的島 是1200英里以外的馬克薩斯群島(marquesas islands)。 但是他們聽到了讓人恐怖的謠言。
they'd been told that these islands, and several others nearby, were populated by cannibals. so the men pictured coming ashore only to be murdered and eaten for dinner. another possible destination was hawaii, but given the season, the captain was afraid they'd be struck by severe storms.
他們聽說這些群島， 以及附近的一些島嶼上都住著食人族。 所以他們腦中都是上岸以後就會被殺掉 被人當做盤中餐的畫面。 另一個可行的目的地是夏威夷， 但是船長擔心 他們會被困在風暴當中。
now the last option was the longest, and the most difficult: to sail 1,500 miles due south in hopes of reaching a certain band of winds that could eventually push them toward the coast of south america.
所以最後的選擇是到最遠，也是最艱險的地方： 往南走1500英里希望某股風 能最終把他們 吹到南美洲的海岸。
but they knew that the sheer length of this journey would stretch their supplies of food and water. to be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms, to starve to death before reaching land.
但是他們知道這個行程中一旦偏航 將會耗盡他們食物和飲水的供給。 被食人族吃掉，被風暴掀翻， 在登入前餓死。
these were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men, and as it turned out, the fear they chose to listen to would govern whether they lived or died.
這就是縈繞在這群可憐的人想像中的恐懼， 事實證明，他們選擇聽從的恐懼 將決定他們的生死。
now we might just as easily call these fears by a different name. what if instead of calling them fears, we called them stories?
也許我們可以很容易的用別的名稱來稱呼這些恐懼。 我們不稱之為恐懼， 而是稱它們為故事如何?
because that's really what fear is, if you think about it. it's a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do. and fears and storytelling have the same components.
如果你仔細想想，這是恐懼真正的意義。 這是一種與生俱來的， 無意識的講故事的能力。 恐懼和講故事有著同樣的構成。
they have the same architecture. like all stories, fears have characters. in our fears, the characters are us. fears also have plots. they have beginnings and middles and ends. you board the plane.
他們有同樣的結構。 如同所有的故事，恐懼中有角色。 在恐懼中，角色就是我們自己。 恐懼也有情節。他們有開頭，有中間，有結尾。 你登上飛機。
the plane takes off. the engine fails. our fears also tend to contain imagery that can be every bit as vivid as what you might find in the pages of a novel. picture a cannibal, human teeth sinking into human skin, human flesh roasting over a fire.
飛機起飛。結果引擎故障。 我們的恐懼會包括各種生動的想像， 不比你看到的任何一個小說遜色。 想像食人族，人類牙齒 咬在人類皮膚上， 人肉在火上烤。
fears also have suspense. if i've done my job as a storyteller today, you should be wondering what happened to the men of the whaleship essex. our fears provoke in us a very similar form of suspense.
恐懼中也有懸念。 如果我今天像講故事一樣，留個懸念不說了， 你們也許會很想知道 essex捕鯨船上，人們到底怎么樣了。 我們的恐懼用懸念一樣的方式刺激我們。
just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: what will happen next?
就像一個很好的故事，我們的恐懼也如同一部好的文學作品一樣， 將我們的注意力集中在對我們生命至關重要的問題上： 後來發生了什麼?
in other words, our fears make us think about the future. and humans, by the way, are the only creatures capable of thinking about the future in this way, of projecting ourselves forward in time, and this mental time travel is just one more thing that fears have in common with storytelling.
換而言之，我們的恐懼讓我們想到未來。 另外，人來是唯一有能力 通過這種方式想到未來的生物， 就是預測時間推移後我們的狀況， 這種精神上的時間旅行是恐懼 與講故事的另一個共同點。
as a writer, i can tell you that a big part of writing fiction is learning to predict how one event in a story will affect all the other events, and fear works in that same way.
我是一個作家，我要告訴你們寫小說一個很重要的部分 就是學會預測故事中一件 事情如何影響另一件事情， 恐懼也是同樣這么做的。
in fear, just like in fiction, one thing always leads to another. when i was writing my first novel, "the age of miracles," i spent months trying to figure out what would happen if the rotation of the earth suddenly began to slow down. what would happen to our days?
恐懼中，如同小說一樣，一件事情總是導致另一件事情。 我寫我的第一部小說《奇蹟時代》的時候， 我花了數月的時間想像如果地球鏇轉突然變慢了之後 會發生什麼。 我們的一天變得如何?
what would happen to our crops? what would happen to our minds? and then it was only later that i realized how very similar these questions were to the ones i used to ask myself as a child frightened in the night.
我們身體會怎樣? 我們的思想會有什麼變化? 也就是在那之後，我意識到 我過去總是問自己的那些些問題 和孩子們在夜裡害怕是多么的相像。
if an earthquake strikes tonight, i used to worry, what will happen to our house? what will happen to my family? and the answer to those questions always took the form of a story.
要是在過去，如果今晚發生地震，我會很擔心， 我的房子會怎么樣啊?家裡人會怎樣啊? 這類問題的答案通常都會和故事一樣。
so if we think of our fears as more than just fears but as stories, we should think of ourselves as the authors of those stories. but just as importantly, we need to think of ourselves as the readers of our fears, and how we choose to read our fears can have a profound effect on our lives.
所以我們認為我們的恐懼不僅僅是恐懼 還是故事，我們應該把自己當作 這些故事的作者。 但是同樣重要的是，我們需要想像我們自己 是我們恐懼的解讀者，我們選擇如何 去解讀這些恐懼會對我們的生活產生深遠的影響。
now, some of us naturally read our fears more closely than others. i read about a study recently of successful entrepreneurs, and the author found that these people shared a habit that he called "productive paranoia," which meant that these people, instead of dismissing their fears, these people read them closely, they studied them, and then they translated that fear into preparation and action.
現在，我們中有些人比其他人更自然的解讀自己的恐懼。 最近我看過一個關於成功的企業家的研究， 作者發現這些人都有個習慣 叫做“未雨綢繆“， 意思是，這些人，不迴避自己的恐懼， 而是認真解讀並研究恐懼， 然後把恐懼轉換成準備和行動。
so that way, if their worst fears came true, their businesses were ready.
這樣，如果最壞的事情發生了， 他們的企業也有所準備。
and sometimes, of course, our worst fears do come true. that's one of the things that is so extraordinary about fear. once in a while, our fears can predict the future.
當然，很多時候，最壞的事情確實發生了。 這是恐懼非凡的一面。 曾幾何時，我們的恐懼預測將來。
but we can't possibly prepare for all of the fears that our imaginations concoct. so how can we tell the difference between the fears worth listening to and all the others? i think the end of the story of the whaleship essex offers an illuminating, if tragic, example.
但是我們不可能為我們想像力構建的所有 恐懼來做準備。 所以，如何區分值得聽從的恐懼 和不值得的呢? 我想捕鯨船essex的故事結局 提供了一個有啟發性，同時又悲慘的例子。
after much deliberation, the men finally made a decision. terrified of cannibals, they decided to forgo the closest islands and instead embarked on the longer and much more difficult route to south america.
經過數次權衡，他們最終做出了決定。 由於害怕食人族，他們決定放棄最近的群島 而是開始更長 更艱難的南美洲之旅。
after more than two months at sea, the men ran out of food as they knew they might, and they were still quite far from land. when the last of the survivors were finally picked up by two passing ships, less than half of the men were left alive, and some of them had resorted to their own form of cannibalism.
在海上呆了兩個多月後，他們 的食物如預料之中消耗殆盡， 而且他們仍然離陸地那么遠。 當最後的倖存者最終被過往船隻救起時， 只有一小半的人還活著， 實際上他們中的一些人自己變成了食人族。
herman melville, who used this story as research for "moby dick," wrote years later, and from dry land, quote, "all the sufferings of these miserable men of the essex might in all human probability have been avoided had they, immediately after leaving the wreck, steered straight for tahiti.
赫爾曼·梅爾維爾(herman melville)將這個故事作為 《白鯨記》的素材，在數年後寫到： essex船上遇難者的悲慘結局 或許是可以通過人為的努力避免的， 如果他們當機立斷地離開沉船， 直奔塔西提群島。
but," as melville put it, "they dreaded cannibals." so the question is, why did these men dread cannibals so much more than the extreme likelihood of starvation?
“但是”，梅爾維爾說道：“他們害怕食人族” 問題是，為什麼這些人對於食人族的恐懼 超過了更有可能的飢餓威脅呢?
why were they swayed by one story so much more than the other? looked at from this angle, theirs becomes a story about reading. the novelist vladimir nabokov said that the best reader has a combination of two very different temperaments, the artistic and the scientific.
為什麼他們會被一個故事 影響如此之大呢? 從另一個角度來看， 這是一個關於解讀的故事。 小說家弗拉基米爾·納博科夫(vladimir nabokov)說 最好的讀者能把兩種截然不同的性格結合起來， 一個是藝術氣質，一個是科學精神。
a good reader has an artist's passion, a willingness to get caught up in the story, but just as importantly, the readers also needs the coolness of judgment of a scientist, which acts to temper and complicate the reader's intuitive reactions to the story. as we've seen, the men of the essex had no trouble with the artistic part.
好的讀者有藝術家的熱情， 願意融入故事當中， 但是同樣重要的是，這些讀者還要 有科學家的冷靜判斷， 這能幫助他們穩定情緒並分析 其對故事的直覺反應。 我們可以看出來，essex上的人在藝術部分一點問題都沒有。
they dreamed up a variety of horrifying scenarios. the problem was that they listened to the wrong story. of all the narratives their fears wrote, they responded only to the most lurid, the most vivid, the one that was easiest for their imaginations to picture: cannibals.
他們夢想到一系列恐怖的場景。 問題在於他們聽從了一個錯誤的故事。 所有他們恐懼中 他們只對其中最聳人聽聞，最生動的故事， 也是他們想像中最早出現的場景： 食人族。
but perhaps if they'd been able to read their fears more like a scientist, with more coolness of judgment, they would have listened instead to the less violent but the more likely tale, the story of starvation, and headed for tahiti, just as melville's sad commentary suggests.
也許，如果他們能像科學家那樣 稍微冷靜一點解讀這個故事， 如果他們能聽從不太驚悚但是更可能發生的 半路餓死的故事，他們可能就會直奔塔西提群島， 如梅爾維爾充滿惋惜的評論所建議的那樣。
and maybe if we all tried to read our fears, we too would be less often swayed by the most salacious among them.
也許如果我們都試著解讀自己的恐懼， 我們就能少被 其中的一些幻象所迷惑。
maybe then we'd spend less time worrying about serial killers and plane crashes, and more time concerned with the subtler and slower disasters we face: the silent buildup of plaque in our arteries, the gradual changes in our climate.
我們也就能少花一點時間在 為系列殺手或者飛機失事方面的擔憂， 而是更多的關心那些悄然而至 的災難： 動脈血小板的逐漸堆積， 氣候的逐漸變遷。
just as the most nuanced stories in literature are often the richest, so too might our subtlest fears be the truest. read in the right way, our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
如同文學中最精妙的故事通常是最豐富的故事， 我們最細微的恐懼才是最真實的恐懼。 用正確的方法的解讀，我們的恐懼就是我們想像力 賜給我們的禮物，藉此一雙慧眼， 讓我們能管窺未來 甚至影響未來。
properly read, our fears can offer us something as precious as our favorite works of literature: a little wisdom, a bit of insight and a version of that most elusive thing -- the truth. thank you.
如果能得到正確的解讀，我們的恐懼能 和我們最喜歡的文學作品一樣給我們珍貴的東西： 一點點智慧，一點點洞悉 以及對最玄妙東西—— 真相的詮釋。 謝謝。
(applause)
(掌聲)
when i was nine years old i went off to summer camp for the first time. and my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. because in my family, reading was the primary group activity. and this might sound antisocial to you, but for us it was really just a different way of being social. you have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your own mind. and i had this idea that camp was going to be just like this, but better. (laughter) i had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns.
(laughter)
camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. and on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. and it went like this: "r-o-w-d-i-e, that's the way we spell rowdie. rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie." yeah. so i couldn't figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. (laughter) but i recited a cheer. i recited a cheer along with everybody else. i did my best. and i just waited for the time that i could go off and read my books.
but the first time that i took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, "why are you being so mellow?" -- mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of r-o-w-d-i-e. and then the second time i tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
and so i put my books away, back in their suitcase, and i put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. and i felt kind of guilty about this. i felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and i was forsaking them. but i did forsake them and i didn't open that suitcase again until i was back home with my family at the end of the summer.
now, i tell you this story about summer camp. i could have told you 50 others just like it -- all the times that i got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that i should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. and i always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. but for years i denied this intuition, and so i became a wall street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that i had always longed to be -- partly because i needed to prove to myself that i could be bold and assertive too. and i was always going off to crowded bars when i really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. and i made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that i wasn't even aware that i was making them.
now this is what many introverts do, and it's our loss for sure, but it is also our colleagues' loss and our communities' loss. and at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world's loss. because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. a third to a half of the population are introverts -- a third to a half. so that's one out of every two or three people you know. so even if you're an extrovert yourself, i'm talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now -- all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society. we all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we're doing.
now to see the bias clearly you need to understand what introversion is. it's different from being shy. shyness is about fear of social judgment. introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation. so extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they're in quieter, more low-key environments. not all the time -- these things aren't absolute -- but a lot of the time. so the key then to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us.
but now here's where the bias comes in. our most important institutions, our schools and our workplaces, they are designed mostly for extroverts and for extroverts' need for lots of stimulation. and also we have this belief system right now that i call the new groupthink, which holds that all creativity and all productivity comes from a very oddly gregarious place.
so if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: when i was going to school, we sat in rows. we sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously. but nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks -- four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other. and kids are working in countless group assignments. even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as committee members. and for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse, as problem cases. and the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research. (laughter)
okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. now, most of us work in open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers. and when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less likely to take outsize risks -- which is something we might all favor nowadays. and interesting research by adam grant at the wharton school has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they're much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things that they're putting their own stamp on things, and other people's ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface.
now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. i'll give you some examples. eleanor roosevelt, rosa parks, gandhi -- all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. and they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to. and this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; they were there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they thought was right.
now i think at this point it's important for me to say that i actually love extroverts. i always like to say some of my best friends are extroverts, including my beloved husband. and we all fall at different points, of course, along the introvert/extrovert spectrum. even carl jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms, said that there's no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. he said that such a man would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all. and some people fall smack in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and we call these people ambiverts. and i often think that they have the best of all worlds. but many of us do recognize ourselves as one type or the other.
and what i'm saying is that culturally we need a much better balance. we need more of a yin and yang between these two types. this is especially important when it comes to creativity and to productivity, because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas and advancing ideas, but who also have a serious streak of introversion in them.
and this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity. so darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned down dinner party invitations. theodor geisel, better known as dr. seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in la jolla, california. and he was actually afraid to meet the young children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him this kind of jolly santa claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona. steve wozniak invented the first apple computer sitting alone in his cubical in hewlett-packard where he was working at the time. and he says that he never would have become such an expert in the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when he was growing up.
now of course, this does not mean that we should all stop collaborating -- and case in point, is steve wozniak famously coming together with steve jobs to start apple computer -- but it does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe. and in fact, we have known for centuries about the transcendent power of solitude. it's only recently that we've strangely begun to forget it. if you look at most of the world's major religions, you will find seekers -- moses, jesus, buddha, muhammad -- seekers who are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of the community. so no wilderness, no revelations.
this is no surprise though if you look at the insights of contemporary psychology. it turns out that we can't even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions. even about seemingly personal and visceral things like who you're attracted to, you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that's what you're doing.
and groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas -- i mean zero. so ... (laughter) you might be following the person with the best ideas, but you might not. and do you really want to leave it up to chance? much better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it from there.
now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? why are we setting up our schools this way and our workplaces? and why are we making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of the time? one answer lies deep in our cultural history. western societies, and in particular the u.s., have always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation and "man" of contemplation. but in america's early days, we lived in what historians call a culture of character, where we still, at that point, valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude. and if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had titles with things like "character, the grandest thing in the world." and they featured role models like abraham lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming. ralph waldo emerson called him "a man who does not offend by superiority."
but then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality. what happened is we had evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business. and so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities. and instead of working alongside people they've known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers. so, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important. and sure enough, the self-help books change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like "how to win friends and influence people." and they feature as their role models really great salesmen. so that's the world we're living in today. that's our cultural inheritance.
now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and i'm also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all. the same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust. and the problems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working together. but i am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems.
so now i'd like to share with you what's in my suitcase today. guess what? books. i have a suitcase full of books. here's margaret atwood, "cat's eye." here's a novel by milan kundera. and here's "the guide for the perplexed" by maimonides. but these are not exactly my books. i brought these books with me because they were written by my grandfather's favorite authors.
my grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower who lived alone in a small apartment in brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when i was growing up, partly because it was filled with his very gentle, very courtly presence and partly because it was filled with books. i mean literally every table, every chair in this apartment had yielded its original function to now serve as a surface for swaying stacks of books. just like the rest of my family, my grandfather's favorite thing to do in the whole world was to read.
but he also loved his congregation, and you could feel this love in the sermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a rabbi. he would takes the fruits of each week's reading and he would weave these intricate tapestries of ancient and humanist thought. and people would come from all over to hear him speak.
but here's the thing about my grandfather. underneath this ceremonial role, he was really modest and really introverted -- so much so that when he delivered these sermons, he had trouble making eye contact with the very same congregation that he had been speaking to for 62 years. and even away from the podium, when you called him to say hello, he would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking up too much of your time. but when he died at the age of 94, the police had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the crowd of people who came out to mourn him. and so these days i try to learn from my grandfather's example in my own way.
so i just published a book about introversion, and it took me about seven years to write. and for me, that seven years was like total bliss, because i was reading, i was writing, i was thinking, i was researching. it was my version of my grandfather's hours of the day alone in his library. but now all of a sudden my job is very different, and my job is to be out here talking about it, talking about introversion. (laughter) and that's a lot harder for me, because as honored as i am to be here with all of you right now, this is not my natural milieu.
so i prepared for moments like these as best i could. i spent the last year practicing public speaking every chance i could get. and i call this my "year of speaking dangerously." (laughter) and that actually helped a lot. but i'll tell you, what helps even more is my sense, my belief, my hope that when it comes to our attitudes to introversion and to quiet and to solitude, we truly are poised on the brink on dramatic change. i mean, we are. and so i am going to leave you now with three calls for action for those who share this vision.
number one: stop the madness for constant group work. just stop it. (laughter) thank you. (applause) and i want to be clear about what i'm saying, because i deeply believe our offices should be encouraging casual, chatty cafe-style types of interactions -- you know, the kind where people come together and serendipitously have an exchange of ideas. that is great. it's great for introverts and it's great for extroverts. but we need much more privacy and much more freedom and much more autonomy at work. school, same thing. we need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure, but we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own. this is especially important for extroverted children too. they need to work on their own because that is where deep thought comes from in part.
okay, number two: go to the wilderness. be like buddha, have your own revelations. i'm not saying that we all have to now go off and build our own cabins in the woods and never talk to each other again, but i am saying that we could all stand to unplug and get inside our own heads a little more often.
number three: take a good look at what's inside your own suitcase and why you put it there. so extroverts, maybe your suitcases are also full of books. or maybe they're full of champagne glasses or skydiving equipment. whatever it is, i hope you take these things out every chance you get and grace us with your energy and your joy. but introverts, you being you, you probably have the impulse to guard very carefully what's inside your own suitcase. and that's okay. but occasionally, just occasionally, i hope you will open up your suitcases for other people to see, because the world needs you and it needs the things you carry.
so i wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly.
thank you very much.
(applause)
thank you. thank you.