【苹果CEO库克】眼前的苟且，是年轻人最大的敌人

I’m really happy to be here. Today is about celebration. And you have so much to be proud of. As you leave here to start the next leg of your journey in life, there will be days where you ask yourself, ‘Where is this all going?’ ‘What is the purpose?’ ‘What is my purpose?’ I will be honest, I asked myself that same question and it took nearly 15 years to answer it. Maybe by talking about my journey today, I can save you some time.


The struggle for me started early on. In high school, I thought I discovered my life’s purpose when I could answer that age-old question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Nope. In college I thought I’d discover it when I could answer, ‘What’s your major?’ Not quite. I thought that maybe I’d discovered it when I found a good job. Then I thought I just needed to get a few promotions. That didn’t work either.


After countless twists and turns（一波三折）, at last, 20 years ago, my search brought me to Apple. Before that moment, I had never met a leader with such passion or encountered（遇见，邂逅） a company with such a clear and compelling（强有力的） purpose: to serve humanity. It was just that simple. Serve humanity. And it was in that moment, after 15 years of searching, something clicked（突然明白）. I finally felt aligned（找到了组织）. Aligned with a company that brought together challenging, cutting edge（最尖端的） work with a higher purpose. Aligned with a leader who believed that technology which didn’t exist yet could reinvent（彻底改造）tomorrow’s world. Aligned with myself and my own deep need to serve something greater.


Of course, at that moment I don’t know all of that. I was just grateful to have psychological burden lifted. But with the help of hindsight, my breakthrough makes a lot more sense. I was never going to find my purpose working some place without a clear sense of purpose of its own. Steve and Apple freed me to throw my whole self into my work, to embrace their mission and make it my own. How can I serve humanity? This is life’s biggest and most important question. When you work towards something greater than yourself, you find meaning, you find purpose. So the question I hope you will carry forward from here is how will you serve humanity?


The good news is since you are here today you are on a great track. At MIT you have learned how much power that science and technology have to change the world for the better. Thanks to discoveries made right here, billions of people are leading healthier, more productive（富有成效的） and more fulfilling（令人感到满足的） lives. And if we’re ever going to solve some of the hardest problems facing the world today, everything from cancer to climate change to educational inequality（不平等）, then technology will help us to do it. But technology alone isn’t the solution. And sometimes it’s even part of the problem.