As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparentson their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle,and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon,especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club,a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to mygrandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents andI really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 yearsold.
i was rolling around in the big bench seatin the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hatedthe smell. At that age, I’d take any excuse to makeestimates and do minor arithmetic.
I’d calculate our gas mileage -- figureout useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basicallythe ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: Ithink it might have been two minutes per puff.
At any rate, I decided to do the math formy grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days,estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up witha reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmotheron the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nineyears off your life!” I have a vivid memory of what happened, andit was not what I expected.
I expected to be applauded for my clevernessand arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates,figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know whatto do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather,who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway.
He got out of the car and came around andopened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quietman. He had never said a harsh word to me, andmaybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in thecar and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with mygrandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer.
My grandfather looked at me, and after a bitof silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harderto be kind than clever.” What I want to talk to you about today isthe difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts ifyou’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices. This is a group with many gifts.
I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift ofa smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case becauseadmission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the deanof admission wouldn’t have let you in. Your smarts will come in handy because youwill travel in a land of marvels. We humans -- plodding as we are -- will astonishourselves.
We’ll invent ways to generate clean energyand a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machinesthat will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but alsoinevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesizeit, but we’ll engineer it to specifications.
I believe you’ll even see us understandthe human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton -- allthe curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts,just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me. How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pridein your choices? I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage wasgrowing at 2,300 percent per year.
I’d never seen or heard of anything thatgrew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles -- somethingthat simply couldn’t exist in the physical world -- was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’dbeen married for a year.
I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted toquit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startupsdon’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sittinghere in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer outof cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrellaand tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings.
I’d always wanted to be an inventor, andshe wanted me to follow my passion. I was working at a financial firm in New YorkCity with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted tostart a company selling books on the Internet.
He took me on a long walk in Central Park,listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, butit would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convincedme to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficultchoice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot.
I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be hauntedby a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the lesssafe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice. Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life-- the life you author from scratch on your own -- begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide, or will you followyour passions? Will you follow dogma, or will you be original? Will you choose a life of ease, or a lifeof service and adventure? Will you wilt under criticism, or will youfollow your convictions? Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong,or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection,or will you act when you fall in love? Will you play it safe, or will you be a littlebit swashbuckling? When it’s tough, will you give up, or willyou be relentless? Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of others,or will you be kind? I will hazard a prediction.
When you are 80 years old, and in a quietmoment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story,the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices youhave made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!
i was rolling around in the big bench seatin the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hatedthe smell. At that age, I’d take any excuse to makeestimates and do minor arithmetic.
I’d calculate our gas mileage -- figureout useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basicallythe ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: Ithink it might have been two minutes per puff.
At any rate, I decided to do the math formy grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days,estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up witha reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmotheron the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nineyears off your life!” I have a vivid memory of what happened, andit was not what I expected.
I expected to be applauded for my clevernessand arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates,figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know whatto do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather,who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway.
He got out of the car and came around andopened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quietman. He had never said a harsh word to me, andmaybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in thecar and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with mygrandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer.
My grandfather looked at me, and after a bitof silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harderto be kind than clever.” What I want to talk to you about today isthe difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts ifyou’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices. This is a group with many gifts.
I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift ofa smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case becauseadmission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the deanof admission wouldn’t have let you in. Your smarts will come in handy because youwill travel in a land of marvels. We humans -- plodding as we are -- will astonishourselves.
We’ll invent ways to generate clean energyand a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machinesthat will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but alsoinevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesizeit, but we’ll engineer it to specifications.
I believe you’ll even see us understandthe human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton -- allthe curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts,just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me. How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pridein your choices? I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage wasgrowing at 2,300 percent per year.
I’d never seen or heard of anything thatgrew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles -- somethingthat simply couldn’t exist in the physical world -- was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’dbeen married for a year.
I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted toquit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startupsdon’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sittinghere in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer outof cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrellaand tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings.
I’d always wanted to be an inventor, andshe wanted me to follow my passion. I was working at a financial firm in New YorkCity with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted tostart a company selling books on the Internet.
He took me on a long walk in Central Park,listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, butit would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convincedme to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficultchoice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot.
I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be hauntedby a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the lesssafe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice. Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life-- the life you author from scratch on your own -- begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide, or will you followyour passions? Will you follow dogma, or will you be original? Will you choose a life of ease, or a lifeof service and adventure? Will you wilt under criticism, or will youfollow your convictions? Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong,or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection,or will you act when you fall in love? Will you play it safe, or will you be a littlebit swashbuckling? When it’s tough, will you give up, or willyou be relentless? Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of others,or will you be kind? I will hazard a prediction.
When you are 80 years old, and in a quietmoment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story,the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices youhave made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!
