獨留巧思傳千古 - 側寫喬布斯

–顧裕光 寫於2011年十月
世界副刊 於2011年10月31日以《側寫喬布斯》為篇名刊登

1970 年，賴瑞‧碧霖（Dr. Larry Brilliant) 醫生夫婦從加州到南亞旅行，正巧碰上東巴基斯坦（次年獨立為孟加拉國）颶風肆虐，五十萬人喪生，社會動亂，民生疾苦，更不用説旅途受阻。碧霖不趕著回家， 反而就地拜師學佛。次年，兩人索性辭去加州公共衛生中心的工作，發動聯合國世界衛生組織「掃除天花」行動，接下來幾年，兩人帶領醫師團隊在印、巴地區上山下鄉，奮戰天花，1980年世衛組織宣佈天花在地球上滅跡。

碧霖夫婦在1978年回到美國，除了在母校密西根大學教書，並成立瑟華基金會（Seva Foundation），最初服務對象是印度、孟加拉、尼泊爾地區的盲人，三十年來，為三百萬盲人恢復視力。現在服務範圍擴大，推動全球社區經濟自主、文 化更新、資源維護、民主和人權。2008年，時代周刊推崇碧霖醫生對人類的貢獻，選他為「世界最有影響力的百人」之一。

瑟華基金會成立第一年，一共籌募到兩萬美元捐款。收到的第一張支票赫然是五千元巨款，捐款人是一個二十三歲、名不見經傳的小伙子，叫做史提夫‧喬布斯。

喬布斯上了半年大學就決定休學。他對許多必修課程毫無興趣，又覺得學校對他未來人生發展沒有助益，賴在學校、無非是浪費父母的血汗錢。他開始和朋友在家中車房內「閉門造機」，這是電腦業最樂道的故事之一。在這時，五千元可以派上許多用場，譬如在報章雜誌上登廣告推銷電腦，或是在外面租一個辦公室兼工廠，讓父母耳根清靜。窮小子卻把錢送給陌生人。

在此之前，年方二十六的碧霖夫婦也是傻得可以，放棄在美國的好差事，跑到印度去為低下階層的病患服務。從2011年回顧1970、1978，是碧霖、喬布斯傻，還是我們這些「旁觀者清」的人太聰明？是他們放棄了機會，還是我們失去了理想？

* * * * * * *

2005年六月，喬布斯在加州史丹佛大學畢業典禮上，發表了一篇動人的演說，包括現在人人引用的句子: Stay Hungry，Stay Foolish。

這麼簡單的四個字，卻很難翻譯。通行的譯法是「求知若飢，虛懷若愚」，很聰明、很工整漂亮，但是離題甚遠。

喬布斯在三段講詞的第一段就直言「大學教育於我無用」。他並不是反知識，説大學無用或教育無用。身任蘋果電腦執行長，他以個人魅力壟斷媒體，讓大家競相推測 蘋果的一舉一動。不斷推出讓消費者漏夜排隊、搶購「非要不可」的新產品，而不像一般企業領導人，削尖腦袋，追逐市場。他的「飢」，是不安於現狀、不做肥貓、不被成功腐化、不斷創新，與求知並沒有直接關聯。

再説「虛懷若愚」。在現代社會裡，謙虛不是美德，況且大部分人只認識形式上的、客套的謙虛（該説是虛謙？）。喬布斯對史丹佛畢業生説：「不要讓別人七嘴八舌 的意見，紛擾你內心的聲音，最重要的是，要有勇氣追隨自己的心靈和直覺。」説這話的人，怎麼會勸告別人「虛懷若愚」？正好相反，許多人說喬布斯獨斷、專制，他從不相信市場調查、焦點小組，而完全信賴自己的直覺。 他的「愚」，應該是寧為呆子、保持傻勁、不向現實妥協、不失赤子之心。

如果一定要套用四字一組的格式，也許可以把 Stay Hungry，Stay Foolish 翻譯成「追求理想，擇善固執」？

這幾個字並不是喬布斯創造的，他是引用一份嘻皮雜誌《全球目錄》最後一期的告別詞。六七十年代，中國大陸閉鎖如銅牆鐵壁，台灣視嘻皮為反文化道德的大毒草， 全力圍堵，不能容忍那一代年輕人的異見，不能體會嘻皮在「腐敗生活」之外，有重大的人文、靈修的突破。嘻皮風從60年代吹了十幾年，到70年代中期已經呈現過眼雲煙。《全球目錄》休刊，雜誌關了門，卻沒有從喬布斯的心裡消失。三十年後在史丹佛引用 Stay Hungry，Stay Foolish 作演講的終結，這是他「赤子之心」另一個證明？還是預兆自己的告別？

與其猜測喬布斯的心意，何不「用心」重讀他的講詞？

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

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:

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.

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, it's 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.

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.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.

And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

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.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's 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:

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.

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 others' 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.

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.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.