Too many of us have dedicated our youth to four words: "Step by step" . I went to high school and university step by step, studied for graduate school, and found a job; I found a boyfriend and girlfriend step by step, and gave birth to a child.
In the eyes of others, we are all synonyms for "excellence", but what you have not expected is that in the constant "excellence", we have turned our lives into "mediocre".
01, "What are you Going to Do?
What Are You Going to Do With That?
The question raised in my question, of course, is a classic question raised in a major in humanities: What is the practical value of studying literature, art or philosophy?
You must be wondering why I asked this question at Stanford, which is famous for its technology? A university degree certainly brings many opportunities to people, is there anything else to question?
But that's not the question I asked. "Doing" here does not mean work, and "that" does not mean your major. Our value is not just our work, nor is the significance of education just to let you learn your major.
Education has greater significance than going to college, and even greater than all the formal school education you receive from kindergarten to graduate school.
What I mean by "what do you want to do" is what kind of life do you want to live? By "that" refers to any training you get, the things you send you here, whatever you're going to do for the rest of your school time.
02. "Waking up one day" "Waking up one day"
How did you go from a lively and capable 19-year-old young man to a 40-year-old middle-aged man who only thinks of one thing?
Let’s discuss how you got into Stanford first. Your ability to enter this university means you are excellent in certain skills. Your parents encouraged you to pursue excellence when you were very young. They send you to a good school, and the encouragement of teachers and the role of peers inspire you to study harder.
In addition to being outstanding in all courses, you also focus on improving your cultivation and have cultivated some special interests with enthusiasm. You participate in many extracurricular activities and take private courses.
You spend a few summer vacations to preview college courses in local universities, or participate in summer camps or training camps with specialized skills. You study hard, concentrate and give your all. So, you may be excellent in mathematics, piano, hockey, , etc., and even an all-rounder.
There is nothing wrong with mastering these skills, and there is nothing wrong with going all out to become the best person. The error of is where this system is missing: anything else.
I am not saying that because you choose to study mathematics, you fail in fully developing your discourse expression ability; nor does it mean that in addition to focusing on studying geology , you should also study political science; nor does it mean that you should also learn to play flute when you study piano. After all, the essence of professionalism is to be professional.
However, the problem with specialization is that it limits your attention to one point, and what you know and what you want to explore is limited there. Really, everything you know is just your profession.The problem with
Professionalization is that it can only make you an expert, cut off your connection with anything else in the world, and not only that, but also cut off your connection with other potentials of your own.
Of course, as a freshman, your major has just begun. As you embark on the path to success you desire, entering Stanford is one of many ladders you step on. After three years of college, three or five years of law school or medical school or research doctoral degree, then several years of internship or postdoctoral degree or assistant professor. All in all, enter an increasingly narrow track of specialization.
You may change from a political science student to a lawyer or company agent, and then become a company agent who specializes in tax issues in the consumer goods field. You have changed from a student majoring in biochemistry, to a doctor, then to a heart disease, and then to a cardiologist who specializes in heart valve transplantation.
I would like to emphasize again, of course there is nothing wrong with you doing this. However, as you enter this track more and more deeply, it becomes increasingly difficult to recall your original appearance.
You begin to miss the person who once talked about piano and playing hockey, and think about what the person who once discussed life and politics with his friends and the content in the classroom was doing. That lively and capable 19-year-old young man has become a 40-year-old middle-aged man who only thinks of one thing.
No wonder older people always seem so boring. "Hey, my dad used to be a very smart person, but he now has nothing to do except talk about money and liver."
There is another problem, that is, maybe you never thought about being a cardiologist, it just happened.
is the easiest to follow the flow, this is the power of the system. I'm not saying that this job is easy, but that it's easy to make such a choice. Or, these are not choices you make at all.
You came to a prestigious university like Stanford because smart kids are like this. You were admitted to medical school because of its high status and everyone envied it. You choose cardiology because being a cardiologist is treated well. What you do can bring benefits to you, make your parents proud, make your teachers happy, and make your friends envious.
Starting from high school or even junior high school, your only goal is to enter the best university, so now you will naturally look at life from the perspective of "how to enter the next stage". "Enter" is a proof of ability, and "Enter" is victory.
first enter Stanford, then Johns Hopkins Medical School, then enter University of San Francisco as an intern doctor, etc. Or go to Michigan Law School, or Goldman Sachs Group or McKinsey Company or something else. If you take this step, it seems that you will inevitably take the next step.
Maybe you might indeed want to be a cardiologist. Dreaming of becoming a doctor at the age of ten, even if you don’t know what a doctor means. You are moving towards this goal while you are in school. You reject the temptation of a wonderful experience of taking pre-study history classes at college, and you ignore the horrible feeling of caring for your child while taking turns on duty in your pediatric bed in the fourth year of medical school.
But no matter what the situation is, either because you are following the crowd, or because you have chosen the road long ago, 20 years later, you may wonder what happened: how you became what you are now, and what all this means.
is not about things in a broad sense, but what it means to you. Why do you do it and what exactly are you doing? It sounds like a cliché, but this "wake up one day" that is known as the midlife crisis has been happening to everyone.
03. The ability to create a new way of life Reinventing your own life
The real innovation is to create new possibilities and create your own life.
However, there is another situation, maybe the midlife crisis will not happen to you. Let me tell you a story about your peers to explain what I mean, that is, she has not encountered a midlife crisis.
A few years ago, I attended a group discussion on Harvard and talked about these issues. Later, a student who participated in this discussion contacted me. This Harvard student was writing a graduation thesis about Harvard, discussing how Harvard instilled what she called " self-efficacy ", a sense of believing that she could do everything.
Self-efficacy or the more familiar saying "self-respect". She said that among the students who got "excellent" in the exam, some would say, "I got 'excellent' because the test questions are simple." But for others, those who have self-efficacy or self-respect, would say, "I got 'excellent' because I was smart."
I have to emphasize again that there is nothing wrong with thinking that I got excellent because I am smart. What Harvard students don’t realize, though, is that they don’t have a third option.
When I pointed this out, she was shocked.
I pointed out that true self-esteem means that at first I don’t care whether the grades are excellent. True self-esteem means that although everything you grow up teaches you to believe in yourself, the results you achieve, as well as those rewards, grades, prizes, admission letters, etc., cannot define who you are.
She also said that Harvard students brought their self-efficacy to society and renamed self-efficacy to "innovation".
But when I asked her what "innovation" means, the only example she could think of was "becoming the CEO of the Fortune 500 Big Companies in the World". I told her that this is not innovation, it is just success, and it is just success determined based on a very narrow definition of success.
Real innovation means using your imagination to realize your potential and create new possibilities.
But here I am not trying to talk about technological innovation, not about inventing new machines or making a new drug.
I am talking about another kind of innovation, which is to create your own life. It is not about taking a ready-made path but creating a path of your own.
I'm talking about the imagination of morality. "Morality" is not related to right or wrong here, but to choice. Moral imagination is the ability to create new ways of living.
It means not going with the flow, not the next step to "enter" a prestigious university or graduate school. Instead, you need to figure out what you really want, not what your parents, peers, school, or society want. is to confirm your own values and think about the path to success you define, not just accepting the life given to you by others, not just accepting the choices given to you by others.
Nowadays, the waiter may let you choose between milk coffee, sugar-filled coffee, espresso and other things. But you can make another choice and you can turn around and go.
When you enter university, people give you many choices, either law or medicine or investment banking and consulting and others, but you can also do other things and do things that no one thought before.
04. Moral Courage Act on your values
What is harder than imagination is the courage to act according to your own values.
Moral imagination is difficult, and this difficulty is completely different from the difficulties you are already accustomed to.
Not only that, moral imagination alone is not enough. If you are going to create your own life, if you want to be a true independent thinker, you also need courage: moral courage. No matter what others say, you have the courage to act according to your own values and will not try to change your mind because others don’t like it.
Individuals with moral courage often make people around them feel uncomfortable. They are out of place with other people’s perception of the world, and worse, make others feel unsafe or unable to make choices about the choices they have made. As long as others don’t enjoy freedom, people don’t care about being imprisoned. But once someone escapes from prison, everyone else will run out.
In the book "Portrait of Young Artists", the author James Joyce asked the protagonist Stephen Diedales to say the following famous saying about the growth environment of Ireland in the late 19th century:
"When a person's soul is born in this country, there will be a big net covering it to prevent it from flying. You talk to me about nationality, language and religion. But I want to break out of these cages."
Today, we are facing other networks. One of them is a word I often hear when communicating with students on these issues, “self-leniency.”
"When you have so many things to do in the process of pursuing your degree, isn't it self-leniency to try to live according to your own feelings?" "Isn't it self-leniency to draw after graduation?"
These are questions that young people can't help but ask themselves questions as they think about something slightly out of order. Worse, they feel it is right to ask these questions. Many students talk to me in their senior year about the pressure they feel from their peers, and they want to justify their creative life or unique life.
You were born to experience your own crazy: breaking the rules crazy, thinking that everything is possible, and thinking crazy that you have the power to try.
Imagine the situation we are facing now. This is an important testimony to us individually, to morally, and to the soul: The poverty of American social thought actually makes the smartest young people in the United States think that the action of obeying their curiosity is self-letting.
The teaching you have received is that you should go to college to study, but you are also told that if what you want to learn is not recognized by the public, it is your "self-leniency". If you are learning what you are interested in, you are even more "self-leniency".
Which is the reason for this? Entering the securities consulting industry is not self-leniency? Is it self-letting to enter the financial industry? Is it self-letting to enter the lawyer industry like many people? If you make music and write articles, you won’t be able to do it because it cannot bring benefits to people. But working for a venture capital company is OK. It is selfish to pursue your ideals and passions unless it makes you a lot of money. In that case, I will not be selfish at all.
How ridiculous are you seeing these views? This is the net that covers you, which is what I mean by saying that it requires courage. And this is a never-ending process of struggle.
In the Harvard incident two years ago, a student talked about the idea that college students need to rethink their life decisions. He said, "We have made a decision. We have decided to become top students who can enter Harvard as early as middle school."
I was thinking, who would plan to live according to the decision he made at the age of 12? Let me put it another way, who would like to let a 12-year-old decide what they will do in their future life? Or a 19-year-old little boy?
The only decision you can make is what you are thinking now, and you need to be ready to constantly modify your decision.
let me explain it more clearly. I'm not trying to convince you all to be musicians or writers. There is nothing wrong with becoming a doctor, lawyer, scientist, engineer or economist, these are reliable and respectable choices.
What I want to say is that you need to think about it and think seriously. What I ask you to do is to make your choice based on the right reasons. What I am urging you is to recognize your moral freedom and embrace it passionately.
05. Don't be too cautious. Don t play it safe
The most important thing is, don't be too cautious.
to resist the temptation of the cowardly values given by our society too high rewards: comfortable, convenient, safe, predictable, and controllable. These are also scattered nets. Most importantly, resist the fear of failure.
Yes, you will make mistakes. But that was your mistake, not someone else's. You will recover from your mistakes, and, precisely because of these mistakes, you will know yourself better. As a result, you become a more complete and powerful person.
People often say that you young people belong to the "post-emotional" generation. I think I may not agree with this statement, but this statement deserves serious treatment. You are more willing to avoid chaos, turmoil and strong feelings, but I would like to say, don't avoid challenging yourself, don't deny desires and curiosity, doubts and dissatisfaction, happiness and gloom, they may change the trajectory of your presupposition.
college has just begun, and adulthood has just begun. Open yourself and face all possibilities. The depth of this world is far beyond what you imagine now. This means that your own depth will be far beyond what you imagine now.
