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請和我一起歡迎凱尼恩學院第188屆畢業典禮演講嘉賓-約翰.葛林。
謝謝。十分感謝Decatur校長、全體教職員、家長、朋友和2016年凱尼恩學院畢業生,恭喜大家。17年前,我本應從凱尼恩畢業,結果我多花了一個學期的時間。當天我跟朋友和同學坐在觀眾席,我不記得任何畢業演講內容,只記得它像裹腳布一樣長,如同帝國歷經千百代興衰,演講嘉賓仍用如蟬鳴般沉悶的語調喋喋不休。因此今天我向你們鄭重承諾:無論如何,這場演講會在14分鐘內結束。如果你們不介意,我想佔用一分鐘時間請你們靜思,這招是我向兒童電視節目主持人佛瑞德.羅傑斯學的。如果你們不介意,我希望現場所有人-不僅是學生,而是現場所有人-閉上眼睛思考一分鐘,只要一分鐘,想想那些至今仍深愛我們的人:家人和朋友、老師和善良的陌生人。我來計時。
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President Decatur, faculty, staff, parents, friends and members of Kenyon’s Class of 2016: Congratulations. To all of you.Seventeen years ago, I was supposed to be graduating from Kenyon. It ended up taking me an extra semester, but I was in the audience that day with my friends and classmates. I remember nothing about the Commencement address except that it lasted ten thousand years. Empires rose and fell and still the speaker droned on, cicada-like in his monotony, so I come to you today with but one solemn promise: One way or another, this will be over in 14 minutes.I want to spend one of those minutes, if you don’t mind, in silence. This is a trick I learned from the children’s TV host Fred Rogers. If you don’t mind, I’d like us all — not just the students but all of us — to close our eyes and think for a minute, just a minute, about the people who loved us up into this moment — family and friends, teachers and kind strangers. I’ll keep the time.
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此刻那些人都為你們感到驕傲。我不禁回想起在凱尼恩的歲月還有指導過我的教授,尤其是Don Rogan,他在這個學年過世。Rogan教授是一位傑出的老師,但在他現象學和福音編修學課堂上學的東西我多半都忘了。我記得最清楚的是他愛我,他很看重我,他和妻子Sally邀請我到他們家,請我吃飯、陪我歡笑、陪我流淚。多年來我一直疑惑他為何愛我,我並非特別優秀或用功的學生,我並未展現什麼特殊潛力。當他過世後,我看見他以前的學生們紛紛在Facebook上表達深切的哀傷,於是我意識到他愛我們所有人。愛不像物質或能量,它並不守恆。接下來17年中,你會忘記很多事,但你不會忘記這個山頂上那些給予你超過他們應付出之仁慈與慷慨的人。因此當我還在這裡唸書時,我的同齡人普遍認為所謂的「正常成年現實世界」基本上是一種讓你感染、最後致你於死地的疾病,伴隨貸款、記帳表和草坪養護的成年生活似乎是令人避之唯恐不及的事物,直到它讓你屈服,就像殭屍病毒。一旦成年,你會開始說這樣的話:「在呈現碎片化趨勢之媒體領域的品牌知名度,我們需要一位知道怎麼把事做好的總統。」
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Those people, they are so proud of you right now. My thoughts turned inevitably back to my years at Kenyon, and to my professors, especially Don Rogan, who died this school year. Professor Rogan was a brilliant teacher, but I’ve forgotten much of what I learned in his classes about phenomenology and gospel redaction. What I remember most is that he loved me and that he took me seriously. He and his wife Sally welcomed me into their home, fed me, laughed with me, cried with me.For many years, I wondered why he loved me — I was not a particularly good or committed student; I showed no special promise. And then, when he died, I saw the grief-stricken Facebook posts pour in from his old students, and I realized: He had loved us all.Love is not like mass or energy — it is not conserved. And in the next 17 years, you will forget a lot, but you will not forget the kindness and generosity of those on this hilltop who were kinder and more generous than they needed to be. So when I was a student here, there was widespread agreement among my peers that the so-called real world of proper adulthood was, basically, a disease you caught and then eventually died from. Adulthood, with its mortgages and spreadsheets and lawn maintenance, seemed to be a thing to be dreaded and resisted until finally it overtook you, like a zombie plague. Once you acquired adulthood, you’d start saying things like, “Brand awareness in a fractured media landscape,” and, “We need a president who knows how to get things done.”
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成年意味著以不帶諷刺的方式談論天氣。記得我還在凱尼恩唸書時,有一次祖母打電話給我,告訴我說她正在看天氣頻道,似乎俄亥俄州正在下雨。我跟她解釋說我正在讀《尤利西斯》,我甚至不在甘比爾,而是在1904年的愛爾蘭都柏林,那段歷史是迪達勒斯極力掙脫的夢魘,這一切的重要性完全不亞於現在的天氣。過了片刻後,她問道:「好吧,到底有沒有下雨?」成年是被如河水般奔流不息的世俗瑣事沖擊的石頭,從履歷表到電費帳單,自然而然地磨光了我所有的稜角,直到我跟其他人沒有任何區別。現在進行到畢業演講中我應該告訴你們「其實成年沒那麼糟」等等等等的部分,但並非如此。成年簡直糟透了,真要形容的話,它糟得遠勝於我的想像。我是指你參加過屋主協商會議嗎?就像在一個遼闊、幾乎毫無生氣的宇宙中,所有2016年畢業生都是奇妙、珍貴、稀有的生命,想像將你清醒卻短暫的2小時意識用來爭論你家前院草坪的草長限制應該是4英吋還是6英吋。但這是事實,你將爭論草長-或同樣荒謬的事,你將幾乎是違背自己意願地學習終身壽險與定期壽險的區別,你將試駕一輛休旅車,發現自己驚訝於它的操控系統的品質。試駕途中,試駕途中,你會發現自己質疑:「我為何這麼做?我為何做這些鳥事?」
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To be an adult meant engaging in totally unironic conversations about the weather. I remember once, when I was at Kenyon, my grandmother called me to tell me that she was watching the Weather Channel and it looked like it was raining in Ohio. I explained to her that I was reading Ulysses, that I wasn’t even in Gambier but instead in Dublin, Ireland, in 1904, that history was a nightmare from which Dedalus was trying to awake, that nothing — literally nothing — mattered less than the current weather, and then after a moment she asked, “Well, is it raining or isn’t it?” To be an adult was to be a river rock blasted by an endless torrent of mundane terrors — from resume formatting to electricity bills — that would inevitably smooth all my hard edges until I looked and felt just like everything else.Now this is the part of the Commencement address where I’m supposed to tell you that in fact adulthood isn’t so bad and blah blah blah but NO. NO. It is so bad. If anything, it is far worse than I could even have imagined. I mean, have you ever been to a homeowners’ association meeting? Each of you in the Class of 2016 is wondrous and precious and rare life in a vast and almost entirely dead universe — imagine devoting two hours of your bright but brief flicker of consciousness to a debate over whether the maximum allowable length of grass in your neighborhood’s front lawns should be 4 inches or 6. But it’s true: You will debate grass length — or something equally stultifying. You will learn, almost against your will, the difference between whole and term life insurance. You will test-drive a minivan and find yourself surprised by the quality of its handling. And along the way, you’ll find yourself wondering: “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing any of this?”
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根據我的經驗,此刻你在凱尼恩學院接受的教育將會非常有用,因為無論你學的是經濟學還是人類學,在過去四、五年中,你一直研究是什麼構成一個充實而成功的人生,我認為那其實就是成年。也許你在凱尼恩的歲月並非為了成年做準備,相反地,也許你一直為了成年做準備,儘管並非以試駕休旅車的心態。你或許熟悉人文教育教導的思維模式,但我認為它主要教導你如何傾聽。無論在課堂上或閱讀時,你一直在傾聽。你傾聽教授和同學的言論,但也傾聽托妮.莫里森、珍.奧斯汀、約翰.密爾頓的想法,你們共同審視人類物種的重要問題:我們虧欠自己什麼、虧欠別人什麼?宇宙的本質是什麼?我們在其中扮演什麼角色?我們如何盡可能緩解內在與外在的痛苦?你們在凱尼恩學過這些問題,但你們不會把它們留在凱尼恩。儘管讓你對這些問題的看法被聽見相當重要,你也在這裡學到傾聽得越多,越能讓你的聲音被聽見。不僅是傾聽明顯的聲音,也傾聽那些微弱的聲音,因為它們已被系統化靜音。
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And this, in my experience, is when your Kenyon education will come in very handy, because whether you’ve studied economics or anthropology, for the last four or, if you’re like me, five years you’ve been investigating what constitutes a fulfilling, successful human life. And I’d argue that actually is adulthood — like, maybe adulthood is not something you’ve spent your time at Kenyon preparing for; instead, maybe you’ve been doing it, albeit not on the minivan scale.You are probably familiar with the old line that a liberal arts education teaches people how to think. But I think it mostly teaches you how to listen — in your classes and in your readings, you’ve been listening. You’ve listened to your professors and to your peers, but also to Toni Morrison and Jane Austen and John Milton as you all together examine the big questions of our species: What do we owe ourselves, and what do we owe others? What is the nature of the universe, and what is our role in it? How best might we alleviate the suffering within and without? You learned about these questions at Kenyon, but you won’t leave them here. And while making your voice heard on those questions is vital, you’ve also learned here that your voice gets stronger the more you listen — not just listening to loud voices, but also to those that are hard to hear because they have been systemically silenced.
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我希望傾聽有助於使你對現今那些誘人的謊言免疫,那些謊言說:強勢與固執是必要的資產,自私不僅是必要的,也是需要的。當你以狹隘的自身利益為出發點,才能讓整個世界獲得最大的利益。這些誘人的謊言具有吸引力,因為它讓我們能一意孤行,因為它構築一個使你能符合自我想像的世界:宇宙唯一的中心。但僅為了自我而活,即使非常成功,將無法填補你內心令人窒息的空虛。根據我的經驗,能填補這種空虛的並非力量,而是軟弱。你在世人面前必定是軟弱的,因為愛和聆聽使你軟弱,它們使你脆弱,它們使你無所遁形。只有當你軟弱時,才能真正看見、承認、寬恕和愛別人的軟弱。軟弱使你不會將他人視為需要打敗的敵人,而是視為合作與共同創造的夥伴,最終我們使人類在這個過程中團結在一起。在屋主協商會議中,可悲的成人爭論草長,他們真正做的是討論他們想共享什麼樣的街區。當你在終身壽險與定期壽險之間做選擇時,事實上你正想著一個沒有你的世界,以及如何幫助那些你拋下的人。你多麼幸運能拋下其他人,多麼幸運曾經與這個人類故事互聯網產生如此深刻的聯繫。事實上這一切,從電費帳單到你同事自稱為「隊友」的工作場所,看在上帝的份上,儘管那不是橄欖球隊,這一切所謂的「成年慘狀」,我找不到講到哪裡了。好,這一切所謂的「成年慘狀」源於生活在一個你與他人有著千絲萬縷聯繫的世界,你必須學習傾聽他們的聲音。
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I hope that listening will help inoculate you from the seductive lies of our time — the lie that strength and toughness are always assets, that selfishness is not just necessary but desirable, that the whole world benefits most when you act in your own narrow self-interest. That seductive lie is appealing because it allows us to go on doing what we would’ve been doing anyway, because it imagines a world in which I am what I feel myself to be: The exact center of the universe. But living for one’s self, even very successfully, will do absolutely nothing to fill the gasping void inside of you.In my experience, that void gets filled not through strength but through weakness. You must be weak before the world, because love and listening weaken you. They make you vulnerable. They break you open. And it is only when you are weak that you can truly see and acknowledge and forgive and love the weakness in others. Weakness allows you to see other humans not as enemies to defeat, but as collaborators and co-creators. In the end, we’re making humanness up together as we go along. At the homeowners’ association meeting, where the miserable adults are debating grass length, what they’re really doing is hashing out what kind of neighborhood they want to share. When you are deciding between whole and term life insurance, you’re actually thinking of a world without you, and how you might be helpful to those you leave behind. And how lucky you will be to leave people behind, to have been woven so deeply into the interconnected web of the human story. All of it, actually — from the electricity bills to the job where your coworkers call themselves teammates even though this isn’t football for God’s sake — all these so-called horrors of adulthood emerge from living in a world where you are inextricably connected to other people to whom you must learn to listen.
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事實上這是好消息。如果你還記得關於草長與天氣的談話,事實上是關於我們如何解決問題、如何共同解決問題的談話,那些談話不僅變得可以忍受,幾乎令人有種超然感。傾聽對你還有另一個用處,幾天後你將擺脫這個奇特而美妙的地方,進入一個世界,在那裡你將是-至少一陣子-你將是顯而易見地軟弱。如果你足夠幸運獲得一份工作,這份工作可能包括為討厭的老闆拿咖啡或輸入資料,或寫沒人讀的新聞稿。有些人或許不把你當回事,認為你並非複雜而多樣化的人,而是組織發條中輕易就能替換的齒輪。這一切將比較容易面對,如果你能不將自己視為英雄之旅的主角,而是龐大複雜的人類史詩中的參與者。我不記得我自己大學畢業典禮的演講內容,但我確實記得畢業前夕溫蒂.麥克勞德說的話。麥克勞德教授,我先向你道歉,因為我刪掉了你原話中的髒話,但-她大概是這麼說:「你即將成為無名小卒,這很重要,因為當你成為大人物,如果你還記得當個無名小卒是什麼滋味,你就不會成為一個混蛋。」
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And that turns out to be great news. And if you can remember that conversations about grass length and the weather are really conversations about how we are going to get through, and how we are going to get through together, they become not just bearable but almost kind of transcendent. One more way that listening will be of use to you: Over the next few days, you will straggle out of this strange and wonderful place, and enter a world where you will be, at least for a little while, manifestly weak. If you are lucky enough to have a job, it will likely involve fetching coffee for ungrateful bosses, or entering data, or writing press releases that no one reads. Some people will probably treat you as less than fully human, imagining you to be not the complex and multitudinous person you are but instead as an easily replaceable cog in the clockworks of their organization. All of that will be easier if you can see yourself not as the protagonist of your own heroic journey but instead as a collaborator in a massive, sprawling human epic. I don’t remember anything said at my commencement address, but I do remember Wendy MacLeod’s speech the day before. Professor MacLeod, I apologize in advance for butchering your quote and for not swearing when you swore, but she said something like, “You are about to be a nobody. And that’s important, because when you become a somebody, if you can remember what it was like to be a nobody, you won’t be a jerk.”
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這是-家長們正在鼓掌。回想起來,我認為這大概是我收過第二好的建議,僅次於Rogan教授給我的建議。他曾經對我說,這次我可以直接引用:「你是個好孩子,但你需要學習何時閉嘴。」因此我很快就會閉嘴。總之我可以針對「如何擁有成功的成年生活」提供你們不切實際的建議,但我不需要這麼做。那些你在靜思一分鐘期間想到的人,他們正是你長大後想成為的人,他們因為你而堅強,也因為你而軟弱。他們傾聽你的聲音,他們毫無理由、不顧一切地善待你,沒有他們你不僅無法在這裡,沒有他們你根本不會存在。如果他們今天在這裡,我希望你花一秒鐘向他們表示感謝;如果他們不在這裡,稍後他們或許會打電話來問你典禮進行的如何,他們甚至可能會問天氣如何。告訴他們這裡是雨天,以五月下旬來說冷得無法解釋,記得詢問他們那部分的世界是否也在下雨,謝謝。
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Looking back, I think that’s the second-best piece of advice I have ever received, behind only that given to me by Professor Rogan, who once told me — and this I can quote directly — “You’re a good kid, but you need to learn when to stop talking.” So anyway, I’ll shut up momentarily. I can offer you no real advice on how to live a successful adult life. But I don’t need to. The people you thought of, during that minute of silence — they are who you want to be when you grow up. They have been strong for you, but also weak for you. They listened to you. They were irrationally, impossibly kind to you. It’s not just that you wouldn’t be here without them; you wouldn’t be without them. If they are here today, I hope you’ll take a second to thank them. If they aren’t here, they may call later, to ask you how it went. They may even ask what the weather was like. Tell them it was rainy, inexcusably cold for late May, and remember to ask if it is raining in their pocket of the world.Thank you.