奥普拉哈佛毕业典礼演讲：人生唯一目标就是做真实的自己
hasbeenOprah Winfrey: Oh my goodness! I'm at Harvard! Wow! To President Faust, my fellow honorands, Carl that was so beautiful, thank you so much, and James Rothenberg, Stephanie Wilson, Harvard faculty with a special bow to my friend Dr. Henry Lewis Gates.
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Oprah Winfrey: All of you alumni with a special bow to the class of '88, your hundred fifteen million dollars.
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Oprah Winfrey: And to you, members of the Harvard class of 2013! Hello!
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Oprah Winfrey: I thank you for allowing me to be a part of the conclusion of this chapter of your lives and the commencement of your next chapter. To say that I'm honored doesn't ev
en begin to quantify the depth of gratitude that really accompanies an honorary doctorate from Harvard. Not too many little girls from rural Mississippi have made it all the way here to Cambridge. And I can tell you that I consider today as I sat on the stage this morning getting teary for you all and then teary for mylf, I consider today a defining milestone in a very long and a blesd journey. My one hope today is that I can be a source of some inspiration. I'm going to address my remarks to anybody who has ever felt inferior or felt disadvantaged, felt screwed by life, this is a speech for the quad.bya是什么意思
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Oprah Winfrey: Actually I was so honored I wanted to do something really special for you. I wanted to be able to have you look under your ats and there would be free master and doctor degrees but I e you got that covered already. I will be honest with you. I felt a lot of pressure over the past few weeks to come up with something that I could share with you that you hadn't heard before becau after all you all went to Harvard, I did not. But then I realized that you don't have to necessarily go to Harvard to have a driven ob
ssive Type A personality. But it helps. And while I may not have graduated from here I admit that my personality is about as Harvard as they come. You know my television career began unexpectedly. As you heard this morning I was in the Miss Fire Prevention contest. That was when I was 16 years old in Nashville, Tenne and you had the requirement of having to have red hair in order to win up until the year that I entered. So they were doing the question and answer period becau I knew I wasn't going to win under the swimsuit competition. So during the question and answer period the question came "Why, young lady, what would you like to be when you grow up?" And by the time they got to me all the good answers were gone. So I had en Barbara Walters on the Today Show that morning so I answered "I would like to be a journalist. I would like to tell other people's stories in a way that makes a difference in their lives and the world." And as tho words were coming out of my mouth I went whoa! This is pretty good! I would like to be a journalist. I want to make a difference. Well I was on television by the time I was 19 years old. And in 1986 I launched my own television show with a relentless determination to succeed at first. I was nervous about the competition and then I became
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my own competition raising the bar every year, pushing, pushing, pushing mylf as hard as I knew. Sound familiar to anybody here? Eventually we did make it to the top and we stayed there for 25 years.
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Oprah Winfrey: The Oprah Winfrey Show was number one in our time slot for 21 years and I have to tell you I became pretty comfortable with that level of success. But a few years ago I decided as you will at some point, that it was time to recalculate, find new territory, break new ground. So I ended the show and launched OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network. The initials just worked out for me. So one year later after launching OWN nearly every media outlet had proclaimed that my new venture was a flop. Not just a flop but a big bold flop they call it. I can still remember the day I opened up USA Today and read the headline "Oprah, not quite standing on her OWN." I mean really, USA Today? Now that's the nice newspaper! It really was this time last year the worst period in my professional life. I was stresd and I was frustrated and quite frankly I was actually I was
embarrasd. It was right around that time that President Faust called and asked me to speak here and I thought you want me to speak to Harvard graduates? What could I possibly say to Harvard graduates, some of the most successful graduates in the world in the very moment when I had stopped succeeding? So I got off the phone with President Faust and I went to the shower. It was either that or a bag of Oreos. So I cho the shower. And I was in the shower a long time and as I was in the shower the words of an old hymn came to me. You may not know it. It's "By and by, when the morning comes." And I started thinking about when the morning might come becau at the time I thought I was stuck in a hole. And the words came to me "Trouble don't last always" from that hymn, "this too shall pass." And I thought as I got out of the shower I am going to turn this thing around and I will be better for it. And when I do, I'm going to go to Harvard and I'm going to speak the truth of it! So I'm here today to tell you I have turned that network around!
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Oprah Winfrey: And it was all becau I wanted to do it by the time I got to speak to you all so thank you so much. You don't know what motivation you were for me, thank you. I'm even prouder to share a fundamental truth that you might not have learned even as graduates of Harvard unless you studied the ancient Greek hero with Professor Nagy. Professor Nagy as we were coming in this morning said "Plea Ms. Winfrey, walk decisively."
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Oprah Winfrey: I shall walk decisively. This is what I want to share. It doesn't matter how far you might ri. At some point you are bound to stumble becau if you're constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourlf higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now when you're down there in the hole, it looks like failure. So this past year I had to spoon feed tho words to bw是什么意思
mylf. And when you're down in the hole, when that moment comes, it's really okay to feel bad for a little while. Give yourlf time to mourn what you think you may have lost but then here's the key, learn from every mistake becau every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then figure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to develop an internal moral emotional G.P.S. that can tell you which way to go. Becau now and forever more when you Google yourlf your arch results will read "Harvard, 2013". And in a very competitive world that really is a calling card becau I can tell you as one who employs a lot of people when I e "Harvard" I sit up a little straighter and say "Where is he or she? Bring them in." it's an impressive calling card that can lead to even more impressive bullets in the years ahead: lawyer, nator, C.E.O., scientist, physicist, winners of Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes or late night talk show host. But the challenge of life I have found is to build a resume that doesn't simply tell a story about what you want to be but it's a story about who you want to be. It's a resume that doesn't just tell a story about what you want to accomplish but why. A story that's not just a collection of titles and
雅思培训环球雅思positions but a story that's really about your purpo. Becau when you inevitably stumble and find yourlf stuck in a hole that is the story that will get you out. What is your true calling? What is your dharma? What is your purpo? For me that discovery came in 1994 when I interviewed a little girl who had decided to collect pocket change in order to help other people in need. She raid a thousand dollars all by herlf and I thought well if that little 9 year old girl with a bucket and big heart could do that I wonder what I could do? So I asked for our viewers to take up their own change collection and in one month just from pennies and nickels and dimes we raid more than three million dollars that we ud to nd one student from every state in the United States to college. That was the beginning of the Angel Network.
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Oprah Winfrey: And so what I did was I simply asked our viewers "Do what you can wherever you are, from wherever you sit in life. Give me your time or your talent your money if you have it." And they did. Extend yourlf in kindness to other human beings w
herever you can. And together we built 55 schools in 12 different countries and restored nearly 300 homes that were devastated by hurricanes Rita and Katrina. So the Angel Network I have been on the air for a long time, but it was the Angel Network that actually focud my internal G.P.S. It helped me to decide that I wasn't going to just be on TV every day but that the goal of my shows, my interviews, my business, my philanthropy all of it, whatever ventures I might pursue would be to make clear that what unites us is ultimately far more redeeming and compelling than anything that parates me. Becau what had become clear to me and I want you to know it isn't always clear in the beginning becau as I said I had been on television since I was 19 years old. But around '94 I got really clear. So don't expect the clarity to come all at once to know your purpo right away, but what became clear to me was that I was here on earth to u television and not be ud by it; to u television to illuminate the transcendent power of our better angels. So this Angel Network, it didn't just change the lives of tho who were helped, but the lives of tho who also did the helping. It reminded us that no matter who we are or what we look like or what we may believe it is both possible and more importantly it becomes p
owerful to come together in common purpo and common effort. I saw something on the Bill Moore Show recently that so reminded me of this point. It was an interview with David and Francine Wheeler. They lost their 7 year old son, Ben in the Sandy Hook tragedy. And even though gun safety legislation to strengthen background checks had just been voted down in Congress at the time that they were doing this interview they talked about how they refud to be discouraged. Francine said this, she said "Our hearts are broken but our spirits are not. I'm going to tell them what it's like to find a conversation about change that is love, and I'm going to do that without fighting them." And then her husband David added this, "You simply cannot demonize or vilify someone who doesn't agree with you, becau the minute you do that, your discussion is over. And we cannot do that any longer. The problem is too enormous. There has to be some way that this darkness can be banished with light." In our political system and in the media we often e the reflection of a country that is polarized, that is paralyzed and is lf-interested. And yet, I know you know the truth. We all know that we are better than the cynicism and the pessimism that is regurgitated throughout Washington and the 24-hour cable news cycle.
Not my channel, by the way. We understand that the vast majority of people in this country believe in stronger background checks becau they realize that we can uphold the Second Amendment and also reduce the violence that is robbing us of our children. They don't have to be incompatible.
