[00:00:02] Follow Your Bliss, Follow your Heart - 英语演讲
[00:00:07] Anderson Cooper Delivers Yale Class Day Speech
[00:00:11] Members of the Class of 2006,
[00:00:15] friends, faculty, parents,
[00:00:17] members of the Taliban:
[00:00:19] Thank you very much.
[00:00:21] What? What? Oh, come on. Come on.
[00:00:26] What are you going to do,
[00:00:28] bury me up to my head in the sand?
[00:00:31] Hey, I’ve been there, I’ve been there.
[00:00:35] I have to be honest,
[00:00:39] I was a bit nervous to come back to Yale.
[00:00:41] I graduated with the Class of 1989,
[00:00:46] 17 years ago, and I still have this recurring nightmare …
[00:00:50] Trumbull, yes, thank you, Trumbull.
[00:00:54] Sure, why not? (referring to Trumbull College)
[00:01:00] I still have this recurring nightmare
[00:01:03] that there’s some exam I haven’t completed
[00:01:05] in one of those throwaway science courses like Intro.
[00:01:10] to Psych or something. Oh, come on, I love Intro.
[00:01:14] to Psych. I just really didn’t want to
[00:01:17] take a science course. And actually last night
[00:01:21] I literally had a dream
[00:01:23] that the campus police had an outstanding warrant
[00:01:26] for my arrest if I returned to Yale.
[00:01:28] So I was a little bit nervous.
[00:01:32] And the other reason I was reluctant
[00:01:37] to return to campus is that being here actually
[00:01:40] allows the Yale Alumni Association to
[00:01:43] get a pinpoint on me. Because you don’t know
[00:01:49] this about the Yale Alumni Association yet,
[00:01:50] but let me just warn you: for the rest of your life,
[00:01:53] they will hunt you down. No matter where you go,
[00:01:58] no matter what country you live in,
[00:02:00] they will find you, and they will write you letters
[00:02:04] and they will squeeze you for every cent you make.
[00:02:08] Seriously, enjoy the next 24 hours because right
[00:02:14] now you are still students.
[00:02:15] Tuesday morning they will have all your numbers,
[00:02:19] all your addresses in the database
[00:02:22] and they will start tracking you.
[00:02:25] If Osama bin Laden was a Yale graduate
[00:02:28] they would know what cave he was in, exactly.
[00:02:31] It’s true.
[00:02:34] President Bush should get the Yale Alumni Association on the case.
[00:02:39] I was actually very excited to meet many of you today
[00:02:44] until I actually did meet you and realized
[00:02:48] how young you are all and how old it makes me feel.
[00:02:52] Tre Borden (Class of 2006 Secretary) informed me
[00:02:58] that actually most of you were born the year
[00:03:01] I graduated from high school,
[00:03:03] which is personally a terrifying prospect for me.
[00:03:07] Seriously, it is a pleasure to be here
[00:03:12] on what is a remarkable day.
[00:03:13] It’s a beautiful day if it doesn’t rain
[00:03:16] and a very special day in your lives.
[00:03:19] You’ve worked incredibly hard to get here,
[00:03:22] to get through here,
[00:03:24] and I hope you’re all very proud of yourselves.
[00:03:27] You should be. And I’m sure you’ve already done this,
[00:03:32] but I hope that at some point this weekend -
[00:03:34] I’m sure everybody’s encouraged you to do this -
[00:03:37] that you look your parents in the eye
[00:03:40] and hug them close and thank them for everything
[00:03:44] they have done to get you to this moment and this spot.
[00:03:48] Because as hard as it’s been for you,
[00:03:52] I guarantee you it’s been twice as hard for them.
[00:03:55] I wasn’t really sure what to talk to you
[00:04:01] about today and I asked Tre and he said,
[00:04:03] “Well, you know Class Day is such an important day,
[00:04:07] and I’m sure we’d love to hear some of your memories of it.”
[00:04:11] And that calmed me because the truth of the matter
[00:04:14] is I have absolutely no memories of this day.
[00:04:19] I thought back to my own graduation and,
[00:04:22] I mean I’m sure I was here
[00:04:25] because I have the little clay pipe and
[00:04:28] I remember I had the pipe because my mom found it
[00:04:32] my room that night and accused me,
[00:04:35] thinking it was a pot pipe.
[00:04:37] And so we got in a big argument about it
[00:04:41] and my roommate decided to solve the argument
[00:04:43] by taking out this two-foot water pipe
[00:04:47] that he had in a locked box in the living room
[00:04:50] and comparing it, to show that in fact,
[00:04:53] that was not a pot pipe.
[00:04:56] It went well, yeah, it went very well.
[00:05:00] So I have no actual memory of sitting here
[00:05:07] in a funny hat listening to a speaker,
[00:05:09] which I actually find calming because,
[00:05:13] frankly, it doesn’t matter what I say,
[00:05:16] because you all are not going to remember this by,
[00:05:20] you know, tomorrow.
[00:05:22] But your parents are going to remember this
[00:05:25] because they paid through their noses for it,
[00:05:29] so I will try to make it memorable for them,
[00:05:32] if for no one else. I do remember Commencement ceremony:
[00:05:37] I remember the cap and gown, the polyester,
[00:05:41] I remember the procession,
[00:05:44] I remember being excited and nervous
[00:05:47] and completely confused about my future -
[00:05:49] feelings, I imagine, that most of you
[00:05:53] are experiencing in some form.
[00:05:55] When I graduated, when I was sitting here I imagine,
[00:06:00] I hadn’t actually applied for any jobs
[00:06:03] and I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
[00:06:07] Yeah, that’s right.
[00:06:09] Raise your hand if you’re in that position.
[00:06:12] I remember asking my mom for advice,
[00:06:16] something I rarely did growing up
[00:06:19] because my mom is not the most practical person on the planet.
[00:06:24] The last time I’d done that was in middle school,
[00:06:27] when I was having problems in math class
[00:06:30] and I asked her for some advice
[00:06:33] and she told me to wear vertical stripes
[00:06:36] because they’re slimming.
[00:06:38] I didn’t know what that meant.
[00:06:40] But her advice to me at Yale graduation was “Follow your bliss” .
[00:06:48] I was hoping for something a little more specific,
[00:06:51] like plastics. What, plastic? You like plastic? All right.
[00:06:59] But in retrospect, follow your bliss was pretty good advice.
[00:07:04] My mom didn’t actually coin the phrase -
[00:07:07] actually it was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College
[00:07:11] named Joseph Campbell who did -
[00:07:13] and my mom had seen a taped interview on TV.
[00:07:16] It kind of shows you our relationship -
[00:07:20] she was giving advice she had gotten off of television.
[00:07:24] I’m thankful she wasn’t watching Montel Williams or something,
[00:07:29] or Fox News. I kid, because they have huge ratings. They kill me.
[00:07:37] The problem, of course,
[00:07:40] with follow your bliss (and I actually think that’s pretty good advice),
[00:07:44] but the problem with follow your bliss
[00:07:47] is actually trying to figure out what your bliss is,
[00:07:51] and that’s not an easy thing to do.
[00:07:54] Like many of you, I have a liberal arts degree,
[00:07:58] which is to say, I have no actual skill.
[00:08:02] And I majored in political science.
[00:08:04] You’re excited about it now,
[00:08:07] but believe me, it doesn’t go very far.
[00:08:13] It means you can read a newspaper,
[00:08:14] but other than that, I’m not really sure what else.
[00:08:17] I also focused a lot of my studies on communism,
[00:08:22] which when the Berlin Wall fell,
[00:08:25] I was totally screwed. I know,
[00:08:28] it was a happy occasion for a lot of people,
[00:08:30] but believe me, on this campus,
[00:08:33] believe me, all of the Russian studies majors
[00:08:36] were very down in the dumps.
[00:08:39] The one thing I knew I liked was television
[00:08:42] and particularly television news.
[00:08:45] I watched a lot of it growing up so I figured okay,
[00:08:49] I’ve got a Yale degree, I’ll go give that a shot,
[00:08:54] I’ll apply for an entry-level job at ABC News,
[00:08:58] a gopher position. Like I’m totally qualified for this:
[00:09:03] answering phones, I’ll go do whatever Peter Jennings wants.
[00:09:07] I could not get this job. It took six months;
[00:09:11] they strung me along; I did interviews.
[00:09:14] I could not get the job,
[00:09:19] which shows you the value of a Yale education.
[00:09:22] But it actually was the best thing
[00:09:24] that ever happened to me.
[00:09:25] I decided that if no one would give me a chance,
[00:09:28] I’d have to take a chance,
[00:09:33] and if no one would give me an opportunity,
[00:09:33] I would have to create my own opportunity.
[00:09:36] So I came up with this plan to become a reporter.
[00:09:41] I figured if I went places
[00:09:43] where there weren’t many Americans,
[00:09:45] I wouldn’t have much competition.
[00:09:47] So I decided to start going to wars,
[00:09:51] which my mom was thrilled about.
[00:09:53] It was a very simple plan, but it was moronic,
[00:09:58] but it actually worked.
[00:10:00] I made a fake press pass on a Macintosh computer -
[00:10:04] actually, I didn’t even make it to be honest,
[00:10:07] a friend of mine made it because I’m computer illiterate -
[00:10:11] and I got a home video camera
[00:10:14] that I borrowed and I just decided to go to wars.
[00:10:17] I snuck into Burma and hooked up with some students
[00:10:23] fighting the Burmese government
[00:10:24] and moved into Somalia in the early days of the famine.
[00:10:28] I spent really the next two years going
[00:10:32] from one war-torn country to another:
[00:10:34] Bosnia, South Africa for Mandela’s election.
[00:10:37] I was in Rwanda for the genocide,
[00:10:40] which makes ultimately doing “The Mole” a natural step,
[00:10:45] as you can see where I’m going.
[00:10:47] I may have gone to school at Yale,
[00:10:52] but I always think that in many ways
[00:10:52] I was educated on the streets of Johannesburg,
[00:10:56] in Kigali, in Sarajevo, in Port-Au-Prince.
[00:10:59] And I’ve learned when you go to the edges of the world,
[00:11:03] where the boundaries aren’t clear,
[00:11:05] where the dark parts of the human heart
[00:11:07] are open for all to see,
[00:11:08] you learn things about yourself
[00:11:11] and you learn things about your fellow human beings
[00:11:14] and what we’re all capable of.
[00:11:17] We’re capable, really, of anything,
[00:11:20] great acts of compassion and dignity,
[00:11:23] as we saw in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
[00:11:26] We’re also capable of great acts of cowardice
[00:11:30] and brutality and stupidity,
[00:11:32] which we also saw in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
[00:11:36] The funny thing is that just two years after doing this,
[00:11:41] of going on my own and going into wars,
[00:11:45] ABC News called me up and offered me a job as a correspondent.
[00:11:51] I was just about 27;
[00:11:53] I was the youngest correspondent they hired
[00:11:57] since they hired Jennings and Koppel years ago.
[00:12:00] For me, it was a lesson: two years
[00:12:03] before I tried to get an entry-level job
[00:12:06] and I thought that was the path,
[00:12:09] because that was the path that everyone took.
[00:12:12] And had I gotten that job there was no way
[00:12:16] I would have had the opportunities that I had;
[00:12:19] there was no way I would have seen
[00:12:22] the things I’ve been able to see.
[00:12:23] When I was graduating and trying to decide
[00:12:29] what to do with my life, I really felt paralyzed
[00:12:33] because I thought I had to figure it out all it once.
[00:12:38] I had to pick a career and start down a path
[00:12:41] that I’d be on for the rest of my life.
[00:12:43] I now know that it totally doesn’t work that way.
[00:12:48] It certainly didn’t for me.
[00:12:50] Everyone I know who’s successful,
[00:12:52] professionally and personally,
[00:12:55] could never have predicted
[00:12:57] when they graduated from college where they’d actually end up.
[00:13:01] My friends from Yale who are happiest
[00:13:04] are the ones who thought less of
[00:13:06] where they’d be in 10 years and what steps
[00:13:09] they’d have to do now in order to
[00:13:11] make partner 10 years from now in a law firm
[00:13:14] or build their 401K. My friends who are happiest now
[00:13:21] are the ones who kept taking steps based
[00:13:23] on what they felt right and what felt
[00:13:26] like them at the moment.
[00:13:28] If I had gotten that job on the set of ABC News
[00:13:32] there’s no telling where I’d be now.
[00:13:36] When I started going to wars I had no clear goal in mind.
[00:13:41] There was no path that promised me success or job security.
[00:13:48] But I was listening really to myself
[00:13:51] and followed my passion,
[00:13:53] and I’m more convinced than ever that if you do that,
[00:13:56] you will be successful. I’m not talking about rich -
[00:14:01] perhaps you will be - but you’ll be fulfilled,
[00:14:04] and that’s the greatest success you can have.
[00:14:07] I always wince …
[00:14:11] I’m kind of rushing because I see the skies darkening,
[00:14:14] which frankly happens wherever I go,
[00:14:17] so if I whip out my rain slicker,
[00:14:20] you all are totally screwed.
[00:14:22] I always wince when someone says
[00:14:26] that college is the best four years of your life,
[00:14:30] because, frankly, for me it wasn’t.
[00:14:34] I hope it’s not for you either.
[00:14:36] Every year after college just gets better.
[00:14:40] Your confidence grows;
[00:14:41] you’re living the life that you’ve chosen.
[00:14:44] It’s so interesting to me
[00:14:47] how real life has very little to do with
[00:14:49] what you’ve learned here, and yet,
[00:14:52] what you’ve learned here,
[00:14:54] what you’ve struggled to achieve,
[00:14:55] will help you. I can’t exactly say how:
[00:14:59] it’s not something that can necessarily be defined.
[00:15:03] When I first went to war in Somalia
[00:15:06] I was surrounded by teenagers with guns and grenade launchers,
[00:15:11] there was nothing particular
[00:15:13] that I’ve learned at Yale that allowed me to survive.
[00:15:16] When I was in Rwanda in the genocide
[00:15:19] and was surrounded by bodies
[00:15:22] and had seen terrible things,
[00:15:24] there was no one particular class
[00:15:27] that I’ve taken that helped me get through.
[00:15:29] And yet something about the experience here -
[00:15:33] the friendships, the accumulating of facts and theories,
[00:15:37] the confidence I gained over the course of four years -
[00:15:40] allowed me to go to those places
[00:15:43] and helped me chart my own course.
[00:15:45] At Yale I met some of the smartest people I know
[00:15:52] but that kind of academic success really means
[00:15:55] very little once you’ve left this campus.
[00:15:58] I’ve never been asked what my grades were at Yale;
[00:16:03] that only happens if you run for president,
[00:16:05] and frankly, as we’ve all seen, it doesn’t even matter.
[00:16:09] No one has ever asked me to talk about
[00:16:13] my senior thesis paper and I’ve never gotten a job
[00:16:17] because I was on the lightweight crew team.
[00:16:19] All those things were hugely important to me at the time,
[00:16:24] but right now, in truth, they are kind of dim memories for me.
[00:16:29] And I’m not saying they’re frivolous or unimportant,
[00:16:33] they’re not, and I treasure
[00:16:36] all the opportunities I had here at Yale.
[00:16:38] But when you graduate,
[00:16:43] the slate is wiped clean.
[00:16:45] Outside of college campuses,
[00:16:48] I think we’re encouraged today to see things through
[00:16:52] a very limited lens. On cable news,
[00:16:55] anchors have become caricatures,
[00:16:57] wearing their politics on their sleeves or their lapels,
[00:17:01] claiming that they’re looking out for you
[00:17:04] and if you only watch their show
[00:17:07] or read their book, you’ll be able to understand
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