Anthropology brought me to a new perspective of understanding the world and people around me. It taught me how to respect cultures, to embrace diversity and to treat every human beings with respect. Try not to judge. Try to learn and to understand.
比賽的意義: KJ在11歲於香港校際音樂節勝出, 因而開展了他的"音樂天才"之路。他的學校DBS每年於校際音樂節勝出無數比賽, 每當其他同學都沈醉於勝利的氣氛之中, 他鄙視。他認為大家應該focus在音樂之中, 比賽是不重要的。「不要為其他人而演奏, 而是為了自己而演奏」這是KJ說的, 說得很好啊。Life would be much easier for everyone of us if we live for ourselves and for those that we love instead of living under some other people's expectation.
我是名校出身的, 小學及初中入讀灣仔半山一天主教女校, 之後轉往另一間在中西區的男女校至中七畢業。作為一個名校舊生, 我不想數名校的不是 (因為旁人聽起來會覺得我扮清高, 尤其是因為我仍然決定不生孩子, It's just too convenient to pretend that you don't care because you don't need to care), 但我想討論一下名校是否真的利多於弊, 如果有家長看到這篇文章, 我希望他們會因此而停一停, 諗一諗。
主流社會的群體(包括政府的AO們)面對"八十後"有點不知所操, 相信是他們不明白為什麼"八十後"會在毫無利益掛帥的情況下仍然奮不顧身, 義無反顧的抗爭下去; 用主流人士的perspective看來, It doesn't make any sense. 事實上, 這方面的討論已經有很多人提出過, 我也不在此反覆討論, 我只想在此多加一點點以豐富其討論層面。
既然這些"八十後"都是minority, 他們在一段很長的時間內亦會保持minority的status (畢竟一個社會的意識形態不會一時三刻被改變啊, 除非是獨裁社會), 那為什麼主流社會(包括香港政府)要那麼在意這些minority的聲音呢? 一個開放的社會, 開明的政府是應該包容不同聲音呀!香港政府何不表現得大方一點呢? 政府一方面說自己會聽取各方意見, 說自己包容, 另一方面又用胡椒噴霧, 又拘留陳巧文, 從minority的perspective看來, 也是It doesn't make any sense at all. 香港政府, 你怕什麼呢, 我一點也不明白。如果我是香港政府, 表現得大方一點的做法, 可以以熱茶西餅來取代胡椒噴霧呀。
再拉遠一點......
社會上討論公共空間(Public Space or Public Sphere)已有一段日子, 但都好像留於"土地"空間的討論(即時代廣場平台這片地的使用權等等)。其實公共空間(Public Sphere)的理論應該是Habermas在The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere一書中提出的。公共空間的"空間"其實不只是一些"土地性"的空間, 亦包含著其他"非土地性"的空間, 例如電台的大氣電波, 報章, internet的forum, 大學校園內的大字報, 等等, 都是一些空間讓人民得以表達自己的意見。Habermas認為, 每一個社會都會有各式各樣的空間讓人發表意見, 極權社會亦然。不同的政府亦會intentionally製造一些public sphere好讓人民意見得以發表, 人的emotion得以release出來; 只要這些public sphere得以妥善地控制著, 取得一個平衡點, majority的地位不變, minority的聲音得以release出來, 大家互相制衡著, 社會是相安無事的。社會越開放, 公共空間亦會越多。
說回香港, "八十後"等社會現象, 我覺得香港政府好像很怕不同聲音, 亦不懂得處理在公共空間內的討論, 更不懂得讓自己取得一個平衡點。一個強勢政府不是要control everything, 而是要everything under its control, that's it, 而且都是那一句, 大方一些吧!
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is aboutconnecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
認識Peter Drucker是幾年前當我在 HKU SPACE 讀 Diploma in Marketing 的時候。那時教Market Research這個module的那位阿Sir, 向我們介紹了兩位很出名的作家/學者, 一是Father of Marketing, Philip Kolter, 另一位是Father of Management, Peter Drucker.
Under Marketing Objectives: (我是做MARKETING的, 這一節, 體會很深)
"Obviously, not everybody can be the leader. One has to decide in which segment of the market, with what product, what services, what values, one should be the leader. It does not do much good for a company's sales to go up if it loses market share, that is, if the market expands much faster than the company's sales do."
"Market standing, regardless of the sales curve, is therefore essential."
"There is also a maximum market standing above which it may be unwise to go -- even if there were no antitrust laws. Market domination tends to pull the leader to sleep..."
(P33)
"Long before the time has come at which management by one person no longer works and becomes mismanagement, that one person also has to start learning how to work with colleagues, has to learn to trust people, yet also how to hold them accountable. The founder has to learn to become the leader of a team rather than a "star" with "helpers"." (pp155-156)
"The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank. But the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, "top management". He holds himself accountable for the performance of the whole." (p208)
"The foundation of effective leadership is thinking through the organization's mission, defining it, and establishing it, clearly and visibly. The leader sets the goals, sets the priorities, and sets and maintains the standards. He makes compromises, of course; indeed, effective leaders are painfully aware that they are not in control of the universe." (p270)
".....the leader see leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege." (p270)
"...an effective leader wants strong associates; he encourages them, pushes them, indeed glories in them. Because he holds himself ultimately responsible for the mistakes of his associates and subordinates, he also sees the triumphs of his associates and subordinates as his triumphs, rather than as threats." (p270)
"The final requirement of effective leadership is to earn trust." (p271)
This strikes me very hard indeed....我知道, 我要找一個可以令我沈迷的興趣, 或去做義工, 或去找一個SECOND CAREER...
"In a knowledge society we expect everyone to be a "success". But this is clearly an impossibility. For a great many people there is, at best, absence of failure. For where there is success, there has to be failure. And then it is vitally important for the individual -- but equally for the individual's family -- that there be an area in which the individual contributes, makes a difference, and is somebody. That means having a second area, whether a second career, a parallel career, a social venture, a serious outside interest, anything offering an opportunity for being a leader, for being respected, for being a success." (pp284-285)
