奥斯卡影帝汤姆·汉克斯在耶鲁大学的演讲

I know many of you were convinced that last night about 6 o'clock local time, the world was going to come to an end. Just because it doesn't mean that it's not nearby, because my appearing today at Yale University is surely one of the four horseman of the apocalypse. But listen, today is your day. Please do not turn off your electronic devices, leave your iphones, your ipads, your sidekicks, your Droids, your blackberries powered up, recording, photographing, texting out all that emerges from this stage over the next few minute. By the way I'm supporting the hat, it ain't coming off. You know later on today you can compare your tweets, and Facebook comments with those of others to figure out if anything memorable went down, hey you know what tweet that last sentence I just said. It will give you something to do, let your friends know where you are today. Okay take this speech set it to music, then maybe insert some crazy kooky graphics. Star in that video yourself, post it on the web, then if it becomes a viral sensation, you will be equal to any cat playing with a paper bag, any set of twin toddlers talking gibberish to each other, as popular as a cute girl that sings about Fridays, hey you could be the next Sam Tsui. Such are just one of the possibilities in our grave new world, the world you now inherit whether you like it or not, the jig is up, the clock is run out, and the future, with a capital F, now rest with all of you and your goofy hats, and all because you went to Yale. You are now the anointed, the charge holders, the best and the brightest; each of you is shining hope for our nation and the world. You are the new wizards who can finally make since of all the delta vectors, and the square roots, and the divided byes in the theorem, we call the human race. The generations before you came of age, took on the job, now it's your turn, welcome.

You know I once had a friend, who had a rich uncle, who promised to pay for his college, as long as my friend wished to stay in school. "You should stay in school, as long as you can," the rich uncle said "Because when you get out of college, you got to work for every day for the rest of you life". And you all will come to understand, what that rich uncle meant, just as surely you will someday wonder where the hell you put your reading glasses, and to yell at your own kids to turn the damn music down. On spring days, like today, it's traditional for us to ponder the state of the world and implore you all to help make it a better place, which implies that things are somehow worse today than when we up here are where you are sitting right now. I'm not so sure that planet earth is in worse shape than it was 30, no 18, no 4 years ago. But that's not to say it's in better shape either, refraining from waxing nostalgic and comparing our then to your now, and avoiding the any talk of you kids these days with your rap and your hip hop and your snoopy dog daddy with the ditty pops, with your fifty cents, and quarter cents. A sober looks shows that just have the world gotten to be a better place after all; it is also grown a bit worse at the exact same rate.; a one step up, a one step back sort of cosmic balance between forward progress, and cultural retreat, that puts man kind on a bell curve of existence, that shows a small segment of joy, ease, and comfort, while equal proportions struggle on, while with little hope in the fortunes with the remainder either on the rise or on the wane that this confounding tide of so many damn things that we grow oblivious the shifts in the quality of our lives. Graduation day is a proper occasion to put a toe in the global waters and I think the mercury shows that things are much as they always have been.

Ten years ago, we busied ourselves with trivial stuff imbued with the importance of in came, 911, in 1991 riches were created in new businesses that never existed, then that economic balloon burst. In 81, I had a great job on TV, and in 82, Bosom Buddies was canceled. In 71, color TV in more living rooms that ever showed young Americans still fighting in combat in Vietnam. In 61, satellites beamed live images around the world for the very first time, but those images were of the building of the Berlin Wall. Now this ten year grid shows this same "yin-yang thang", and I'm trying to copyright that; yin-yang thang- copyright Tom Hanks. This shows this same yin-yang thang on graduation day 2011. You know we all have these devices that can make a permanent record of revolutionary change on the other side of the globe, as well as hate filled diet tribes from across town. Fewer and fewer in our country go to bed hungry but did you know see how obesity now affects about half our population. No matter how many bargains we find at the local U-Mart, many of us still struggle to pay the rent and the utilities. Our country is no longer at physical or even ideological war with our enemies for most of the last century, but in the eleven and a half years of the third millennium, our armed forces have been fighting in the field for nine of them. Purchasing intellectual property and the work of artists we admire is as simple as clicking a mouse and paying less than a few bucks, which means you may find that there's no guarantee in making a living at your chosen discipline. Now some advantages particular to this age, are not to be denied; boredom has seemed to have been vanquished, there is always something to do, but hasn't this translated into a perpetual distraction in our lives. In the bathroom, at the dinner table, in the backseat, at a wedding, at a brisk, at a graduation day; there's always something to check, something to tweet, something to watch, something to download, something to play, something to share, something to buy, someone on a voicemail, something to yank at our attention span and it's all in the palm of our hand for a small monthly service fee. That same technology, has allowed for a surplus of celebrities, and that is nothing to cheer about. Anyone, although that Sam Tsui he rocks, anyone can enjoy the perks of notoriety now and the duration of fame has been lengthened from Andy Warhal's brief 15 minutes, to a good 15 months, if you're willing to do certain things on camera. Though our Willian language is often the vocabulary of official news speak is boogeyman that is the all seen "big brother", has never emerged, unless you live in North Korea, or run a red light in Beverly Hills, or shop online, or have done something stupid in the wrong place or the wrong time in front of someone with a camera in their cell phone, and that is everybody. So pardon my junior college Latin, the vulgestpopuli has become the all seeing state and if you cross it Google Search will forever display you screw up, so actually there is a big brother, but he's not in the level of fiction, he's actually all of us, but he lives in our search engines. So no matter how many times I do the calculations, I come up with a social draw, the positives balance the negatives, the x's equal the y's, and our hopes weigh as much as our fears, but I hesitate on that last one because, fear, good lord, fear is a powerful physiological force in 2011. We here up in the stands, and surrounding you of this graduating class look to you as we do every year, hoping you will now somehow through your labors, free us from what we have come to fear, and we have come to fear many things, fear has become the commodity that sell as certainly as sex. Fear is cheap, fear is easy, fear gets attention, fear is spread as fast as gossip and just as glamorous, juicy, and profitable. Fear twists facts into fiction that becomes indistinguishable from ignorance. Fear is a profit churning go to with a home market being your whole family.

You know sitting in the house one day, watching the game on TV not long ago, along came this promo for the local nightly news "Are our schools poisoning our children? That story and our summers hottest bikinis tonight at 11" In that I had that school age kids at the time, I fear that they might be being poisoned, and summer was still a few weeks away. I tooned in to get the scoop, and the actual news stories of that news broadcast was this, a certain supply of hamburger was found to have a bit to much of a particular bacteria in it and for safeties sake, was being taken off the market. That same hamburger was slated for sale to an out of state school system for its cafeterias, but it was recalled in time. So answering that news program's own question then, no, our schools were not poisoning our children, but yes, that summer there would be some very hot bikinis at the beach.

Now the early American naval commander, John Paul Jones said "If fear is cultivated, it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery" and this is why I am a big fan of history, because observations of the American colonies over 200 years ago by a compatriot of Nathan Hale, who lived in that building right over there, translates word for word of the United States in 2011 For I take that fear to be fear in a large scale, fear itself intimidating and constant. And I take faith to be, what we hold in ourselves, our American ideal of self-determination. Fear is whispered in our ears and shouted in our faces. Faith must be fostered by the man or woman you see every day in the mirror. The former forever snaps at our heels and our synapsis and delays our course, the later could spur our boot heels to be wonderment, stimulate our creativity, and continue to drive us forward. Fear or faith, which will be our master?

Three men found that they could no longer sleep because of their deep seeded fears, this is a story I'm telling. Their lives were in the state of stasis because of their constant worries. So they set out on a pilgrimage to find a wise man, who lived high in the mountains, so high above the tree line, that no vegetation grew, no animals lived, not even insects could be found so high up in the mountains in that thin air. When they reached his cave, the first of the three said "help me wise man, for my fear has crippled me"

"What is your fear?" asked the wise man

"I fear death" said the pilgrim "I wonder when it is going to come for me"

"Ah, death" said the wise man "Let me take away this fear my friend. Death will not come to call until you are ready for its embrace. Know that and your fear will go away"

Well this calmed that pilgrim's mind and he feared death no longer.

The wise man turned to the second pilgrim and said "What is it you fear my friend?

"I fear my new neighbors" said the second pilgrim "They are strangers, who observe holy days different than mine. They have way to many kids. They play music that sounds like noise"

"Ah strangers" said the wise man "I will take away this fear my friend. Return to your home and make a cake for your new neighbors. Bring toys to their children. Join them in their songs, and learn their ways, and you will become familiar with these neighbors, and your fear will go away."

The second man saw the wisdom in these simple instructions, and knew he would no longer fear the family who were his neighbors. There in the cave so high in the mountains that nothing could live, the wise man turned to the last pilgrim and asked of his fear.

"Oh wise man, I fear spiders. When I try to sleep at night, I imagine spiders dropping from the ceiling, and crawling upon my flesh, and I cannot rest"

"Ah, spiders" said the wise man "No shit, why do you think I live way up here?"

Fear will get the worst of the best of us, and peddlers of influence count on that. Throughout our nation's constant struggle to create a more perfect union, establish justice, and ensure our domestic tranquility, we battle fear from outside our borders to within our own hearts every day of our history. Our nation came to be despite fear of retribution for treason from a kingdom across the sea. America was made strong and diverse because here people could live free from the fears that made us their daily lives in whatever land they called the old country. Our history books tell of conflicts taken up to free people from fear. Those kept in slavery in our own states, and deliberate home nation from the rule of tyrants and theologies rooted in fear. The American cause at its best has been the cultivation of the faith that declares we will all live in peace, when we are all free to worship as we choose, when we are free to express our hearts, and when we all seek a place free from fear, but we live in a world where to many of us are to ready to believe and fear things that do not exist, conspiracies abound, divisions are constructed, and the differences between us are not celebrated for making us stronger but calculated and programed to set us against each other. Our faith is tested by unpredictable providence, and threatened when common sense in corrupted by specific interests.

Speaking from 54 years of experience, the work towards a more perfect union is a never ending concern that involves each and every one of us. Evidence that our nation is becoming a better place is everywhere, but each new day, fear is as the Jersey poet says "lurking in the darkness on the edge of town".

Your rising from bed every morning will give fear its chance to grow stronger just as it will afford faith its chance to blossom. You will make the choice to react to one or create the other, and because you are smart enough to earn you place on this college day at Yale University, you will sense the moment, and you will know what to do.

In the meantime ponder this front in the struggle against ceaseless fear and its ceaseless flow. In the coming months and years veterans of war in Iraq and Afghanistan will finally come home for good. After so many tours, and we know this, some after many tours on the body and soul have spilled a great portion of their lives. For all of them after a long time has spent far away in the harsh realm of war, and they return different from what they were when they left. Surely their faith in themselves is shadowed by a fear of not knowing what is expected of them next. Now no matter what your view of those wars over there, you can affect the future of our nation right here by taking their fears head on. You can imprint the very next pages of the history of our troubled world by reinforcing the faith of those returning veterans, allowing them to rest, aiding in their recovery, if possible their complete recovery. So let those of us who watch the debate of their long deployments serve them now as they served as they were asked and as they were ordered. Let's provide them a place free of fear, by educating them if they can learn, by employing them as they transition from soldier back to citizen, and by empathizing with the new journey they are starting even though we will never fully understand the journey they just completed. We all will define the true nature of our American identity, not by the parades and the welcome home parties, but now we match their time in the service with service of our own. Give it four years, as many years as you just spent here at Yale, in acts both proactive and spontaneous, and do the things that you can to free veterans of the new uncertainty that awaits them, from the mysterious fear they will face the day after they come home. Cultivate in them the faith to carry on and they will do the rest.

So commencements day arrives, your work begins, work that will not always be joyful to you, labor that might not always fulfill you, and days that will seem like one damn thing after the other. It's true, you will now work every day for the rest of your lives. That full time job, your career as human beings, and as Americans, and as graduates of Yale, is to stand on the fulcrum of fear and faith. Fear at your back, faith in front of you. Which way will you lead? Which way will you move? Move forward, move ever forward, and tweet out the picture of your results. It may make you as famous as Sam Tsui. Thank you.