TAME THAT
WILD HORSE!
Dear parents, dear teachers and dear
students,
Today we have gathered here to celebrate
an important occasion, a milestone for our senior 3 students and perhaps for
their parents as well. In anthropology, the word "celebration" is
defined as an event organized to celebrate a significant change in one’s life.
People celebrate their birthdays because a birthday is the day when we all
start experiencing this wonderful world. People celebrate their weddings,
reunions, comings of age, and returns with similar joyful
feelings in their hearts. It is the recognition of the “change of state” in
one’s life, admitting the death of the old self and welcoming the resurrection
of the new one, with perhaps, a partial denial of the permanent self.
High school graduation can be considered
as one of these “change of state” moments in one’s life. As a math teacher, I
would like to use the metaphor of an inflection point where the curvature of
the graph changes its direction, hopefully from concave down to concave up, not
the other way around J. Yes, it is an inflection point at
which you are transforming yourself from the state of naive high school
students to the state of responsible adults. A responsible adult means a free-thinking mind with a lot of weight, it means a person who is ready for the
consequences of his actions and decisions, it means using freedom with the
utmost care, like holding flames in one’s hands. Those flames can be used to
heat a house and save lives in freezing winter nights or they also can be used
to burn and destroy an entire forest. Freedom in this sense is a sword with two
sharp edges. If you know how to control it, it serves you. If you don’t, then
you feed a monster with all your good intentions and in the end, that monster
will destroy you.
Life, with its full meaning, starts
after high school because first time in your life you will be alone in that
wild jungle, all by yourself with your own judgment and your own decisions. One
of the greatest Chinese writers, the father of Modern Chinese Literature, Lu
Xun, once said “At the beginning, there were no roads on earth. People kept
walking and walking, then the roads appeared.” A high school student who is
being told what to do with every second of his/her life does not really have
the capacity to understand these wise words. Only if you are free or partially
free, these words make sense because a life, no matter how complex it might
look, is always determined by two main factors: the consciously-made choices
and random collisions.
These two factors are not independent of
each other, they are entangled like the cables of your earphones in your
pockets. Most of the times, randomness plays a bigger role than we can ever
imagine although our narcissistic nature usually tells us that we are made of
our choices. Of course, we like to exaggerate the role of choices in successful
people and exaggerate the role of randomness in people who could not make big
names for themselves. This is probably why the word “unlucky” is used for the
failed ones much more often than the word “lucky” used for the successful ones.
My advice to the new graduates at this
point will be this: If you want to decrease the role of randomness in your
future life and increase the role of your conscious choices, there is only one
way to do it. We cannot control randomness but we can tame it, like a wild
horse whose movements are unpredictable but once you tame it the same wild
horse becomes your best friend. In the way we tame the wild horse, we can also
tame randomness by lowering the variations and this way we can decrease the
chances of possible colossal damages. This, of course, can be done by being determined,
being brave, working hard for the next target and not giving up until the end.
There is no guarantee for success in
life, there is no secret formula for happiness and there is no magical elixir
for absolute inner peace. We are random dots on an infinitely large Cartesian
Plane with infinitely many options. Choose happiness, kindness, hard work and
courage; the success will follow sooner or later. If you choose success over
everything else, it is very likely that you will never get it in the way you
desire.
Going back to Lu Xun’s words, it is true
that there are no roads before your eyes when you stand still and look at the
horizon with your lazy eyes but they will appear once you stop being idle and
take your first step forward. Only a portion of a long long road will appear
first. Once you set your foot on the road, you will see more of it. The more
you walk, the more confidence you will build and the more experience you will
accumulate. The key criteria here is not to follow someone else’s steps but
creating your own path, creating your own self and life around this self. As
the famous poem of Robert Frost mentions:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
took the one less traveled by,
And that made all the difference.
Take the less-traveled road and make the difference for both yourself and for those who love you.
Let me finish my boring speech with a
little inspirational story that you should always remember:
A young man enters a shop and asks the
old clerk what they sell in there. The clerk says “We sell dreams.” The young
man seems interested and wants to see a few samples. The clerk shows him three
good dreams. Young man likes the third dream in which he sees himself quite
different from what he is in his current life. In real life he does not have
good relationships with the people around him, he is not a real risk-taker and
not very confident in his decisions. However, in this dream, everything seems
sorted out; including his own personality, he defends the morality behind all
his actions with great confidence.
He
then asks the price of the dream he liked the most. The
clerk says “A few years of your life”
“I
didn’t get it,” he says, “Don’t you sell for money?”
“No,
we sell the dreams for a proportion of customer’s lifetimes.” the clerk says.
“But”
replies the young man, “Isn’t it too expensive to pay a few years of life for a
dream?”
The
old clerk smiles “Not at all, young man. We have some dreams which cost the
entire life of a man.”
The
young man leaves the shop without buying the dream and goes back to his normal
life.
He
was not brave enough to deserve his dreams.
---
Yes, be brave to deserve your dreams and
even if you cannot change the world, you can at least try not to let the world
change you.
Congratulations and best wishes one more
time…
----
驯服那匹野马！
亲爱的家长、老师、学生们，大家好：
今日我们相聚一堂，庆祝一个重要的时刻。这对我们的高三学生来说是一个里程碑，对他们的父母来说也许亦是如此。在人类学中，“庆祝”一词被定义为欢庆一个人生活中重大变化的活动。人们庆祝生日，因为生日是我们开始体验这个美好世界的日子。同时，人们怀着类似的喜悦心情庆祝婚礼，观礼，相聚，重逢。庆祝是对一个人生活状态的变化的承认：承认旧自我的死亡，欢迎新自我的复活，也许部分地否定了永恒的自我。
高中毕业可以被认为是一个人一生中生活状态变化的时刻之一。作为一名数学老师，我想用一个拐点来比喻。在这个拐点上，图形的曲率改变了方向，希望它是从向下变成了向上的趋势，意味着步步高升，而不是反过来。是的，这是一个重要的拐点。在这个拐点上，你正在把自己从一个幼稚的高中生转变成一个负责任的成年人。一个负责任的成年人意味着拥有一个自由思考、有质量的头脑；意味着已经准备好去承担一切行动和决定的所带来的后果；意味着谨慎地使用自己的自由时间。管理自由，就像一个人的手中持有火焰：这些火焰可以用来加热房屋，在寒冷的冬夜拯救生命，也可以用来燃烧和摧毁整个森林。从这个层面上说，自由是一把双刃剑。如果你知道如何控制它，它就会为你服务。如果你滥用自由，那就相当于用你所有的善意来喂养了一个怪物，最终，这个怪物会毁掉你。
充满意义的人生，始于高中毕业后。因为这将会是你生命中第一次，完全依靠你自己的判断和决定，独自一人在狂野的丛林中闯荡。中国最伟大的作家之一，现代文学之父鲁迅，曾经说过，“其实地上本没有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。”当然，一个时时刻刻被安排好人生下一步的高中生不会有真正的能力去理解鲁迅这类明智的话。只有当你是自主的，或逐渐自主的时候，这些词才会对你有意义。因为无论生活看起来多么复杂，它总是由两个主要因素决定的：有意识的选择和随机的安排。
这两个因素并不是相互独立的，它们就像你口袋里的耳机线一样缠绕在一起。大多数时候，随机性发挥的作用比我们想象的还要大，尽管我们自恋的天性通常告诉我们，我们的生活是由自己的选择决定的。当然，我们喜欢夸大自主选择的角色在成功人士身上的作用，夸大随机因素的角色在无法成名的人身上的作用。这可能就是为什么“不幸”这个词用在失败的人身上的频率要远远高于“幸运”这个词用在成功的人身上的频率。
在这一点上，我给应届毕业生的建议是：如果你想减少未来生活中的随机性，增加有自主意识的选择，那么只有一种方法，那就是，虽然我们不能控制随机性，但我们可以驯服它。随机因素就像一匹野马，它的动作是不可预测的，但一旦你驯服了它，这匹野马就会成为你最好的朋友，且听从于你。此外，我们也可以通过降低生活中的变量来驯服随机性，这样就可以减少可能造成巨大损害的机会。当然，这也可以通过变得坚定不移、勇往直前、奋力进取、永不言弃来实现。
生活中没有成功的保证，没有幸福的秘方，也没有绝对内心平静的灵丹妙药。我们是在无限大的笛卡尔平面上的随机点，有无穷多个选项。选择幸福、善良、努力和勇气，那么成功迟早会随之而来。然而，如果你认为成功大于一切，你很可能永远都不会以你想要的方式获得成功。
回到鲁迅的话，当你站着不动，用你的懒惰的眼睛看地平线，无所作为的时候，确实没有路会为你铺开。但只要你停止懒惰，不再无所事事，尝试迈出你的第一步，你面前的路就会出现。在漫长的道路伊始，你只会看见路的开端，一旦你踏上这条路，步步向前，你就会看到更多。你走得越远，你就会建立越多的信心，积累越多的经验。更重要的是，成功的关键不是跟随别人的脚步，而是创造你自己的道路，缔造你的自我和自己的生活。正如罗伯特·弗罗斯特的著名诗歌所写到的:
林子里有两条路，
我选择了行人稀少的那一条，
它改变了我的一生。
走一条人迹罕至的路，为自己和爱你的人做出改变吧。
让我用一个你应该永远记住的励志故事来结束我无聊的演讲:
一个年轻人走进一家商店，问老店员店里卖些什么。店员说：“我们卖梦想”。这个年轻人似乎很感兴趣，他请求想看一些样品。店员给他看了三个积极的梦想。年轻人喜欢第三个梦想，因为在这个梦想中，他看到自己与他现在的生活大不相同。在现实生活中，他与周围的人没有良好的关系，他不是一个真正的敢于承担挑战的人，对自己的决定也不是很有信心。然而，在这个梦里，一切似乎都解决了；包括他自己的个性，他以极大的信心捍卫他所有行为背后的道德。
然后，他询问了他最喜欢的梦想的价格。
店员说：“价格是你的几年生活。”
“我没明白，”他说，“你不卖钱吗？”
“不，顾客需要用一生中的一部分时间来购买梦想。”店员说。
“但是，”年轻人回答说，“为一个梦想付出几年的时间不是太贵了吗？”
老职员笑着说:“一点也不，年轻人。有一些梦想，它花费了一个人的一生。”
年轻人没有买到梦想就离开了商店，回到了他的正常生活。
他不够勇敢，不配拥有自己的梦想。
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是的，勇敢地去实现你的梦想，即使你不能改变这个世界，至少你可以试着不让这个世界改变你。
再次祝贺你，并致以最良好的祝愿...
Translated by Caroline Chen (S2 Student)
