You graduates have every right to expect penetrating words of profound wisdom.
即将毕业的你们，完全有权利期待一场极富人生智慧的演讲。
Unfortunately, though, I am going to have to disappoint you and present to you a multiple-choice test the last of your college career.
但不巧的是，我要让你们失望了。接下来，我需要你们做一个离开校园之前最后一个单选测试题。
The only consolations that I can offer in presenting the test are that you may consult texts freely, the test is self-scoring, and you have a lifetime at your disposal now to complete it.
我唯一能给予你们宽慰的是：测试中，大家可以自由交流，自己为自己的测试结果打分，而你，从现在起，可以用一生来完成这个测试。
This exam will be proctored, though.
不过，这场测试还是会受到严格监督的。
The proctors will be two – the community in which you live and, hardest taskmaster of all, your inner self.
监考官有两个：一个是你所生活的社会；另一个则是内在的自我。
The question: What do you do with your education now that you have it – and now that it is beginning to become obsolete even as you sit here?
测试的问题是：对于你已经获得的学历，你会用他来做什么呢？
Choose one of five possible answers.
从以下五个可能的答案中选择一个。
Choice One: Put your diploma in a convenient drawer and close the drawer.
选项一：把你的学位证书塞进抽屉里，不再理会。
Put whatever textbooks you've accumulated in a bookcase and close the bookcase.
把你学过的所有课本放进书柜里，不再打开。
Put your mind to the dailiness of earning a satisfactory livelihood and close your mind.
让你日常的所思所想，变成如何过一个舒适的人生，并停止思考。
I should warn you that it will take a bit of doing to follow this course with the rigour that it deserves. You will have to take care not to read anything except, in the case of men, the sports pages or, in the case of women, columns of household hints.
整个过程其实并不容易：你必须保证自己不去阅读，对于男人体育新闻除外，对于女人来说，只读读那些杂志上的主妇持家小技巧。
You'll have to choose your friends with extreme care to make sure that you don't rub up against any stimulating personalities.
在交友上你得慎重再慎重：确保你不会遇上任何一位有趣的人。
You'll have to build your own defences against a world of complex realities that will insist on trying to intrude on you at the most inconvenient times.
你还需要为自己建一堵墙，抵御这复杂的现实世界，这个无时无刻不来打扰你的真实世界。
But it can be done.
虽然很难，但这些都是可以做到的。
I've known college graduates who have achieved it.
我知道一些毕业生，他们已经做到了。
They've wrapped themselves in an apathy so thick that they're in position to say in all truth, "No opinion," to any pollster who might question them on any subject.
他们将自己牢牢封锁在冷漠之中，无论民意调查还是问他们对任何事情的态度，他们的回应永远是：怎样都行，我没意见。
It's a choice that's available to you.
这是可以做的一个选择。
Choice one.
这是选项一。
Choice Two: Go forth into that waiting world, carefully assess the prevailing opinions, and then conform.
选项二：走进这个世界，先等等，别急着做什么，先去谨慎评估那些普世的价值观，然后服从，随大流。
Forget this theoretical nonsense they've been feeding you here.
忘记学校交给你们的那些“胡说八道”的理论。
You'll have your degree. That certifies you're educated. Let it go at that.
你虽然有文凭了，但那只能证明你接受了教育而已，但就那样吧。
You can scan the whole of the daily newspaper, as long as you make sure it's a newspaper that agrees with you and all other right-thinking citizens on all critical issues.
你可以把每天的报纸读完，只要你确定报纸上传达的观点与你所想的完全一致，而且所有同样满怀正义感的市民们，也都在关注这些关键问题。
You are even permitted, if you take this choice, to buy two books a year as long as you make sure they're best best-sellers.
如果你选了这个选项，你甚至会被准许每年买两三本书，只要确保他们都是畅销书就行。
Reading the books is optional.
读不读其实无所谓的。
You don't have to be nearly so selective in making friends if you go this route instead of the first one.
如果你选了这个选项，而不是第一个，那么，在交友上，你就不会有那么多条条框框。
After all, about 80, perhaps 85% of the people with whom you'll come in contact fit nicely in this choice-two category.
毕竟你即将交往的那些朋友里，差不多有80%-85%的人都完全属于选项二。
It isn't that they're particularly talented at blending into the background.
这并不是说，他们有多擅长融入到人群和背景环境里。
They are the background.
因为他们本身就是背景。
You, too, can be a pillar-of-society conformist. No strain, no pain. Well, almost no pain.
你，也一样可以做一个默守陈规的一砖一瓦，没有焦虑痛苦。
The anguish of those moments in your middle age when you lie sleepless at 2 a. m. or 3 and wonder whatever happened to all your bright ambitions.
当你人到中年，凌晨两三点在床上辗转反侧难以入眠，或许会突然问自己：我当初那些雄心壮志的梦想哪去了？
That anguish and those moments don't count too much.
不过这种失眠的情况也不会太多啦！
Most of the time you can be comfortable with choice two, and who could ask for more than that?
选项二大多数情况下是非常舒适的，所以还奢求什么呢？
Choice Three: Refuse to relax into the commoner forms of conformity. Find yourself, instead, a clique of the elite, an "in" group, and conform yourself to it.
选项三：拒绝平庸，寻找自己擅长的领域并加入精英队伍，并让自己完全融入。
You might imagine, from that bare description of this choice, that this would be a difficult thing to do.
你可能会觉得，这是一个多么苍白的解释，这也很难做到。
It isn't at all.
其实一点不难。
There are just two requisites: First, you must have a speciality of your own, some field – or, better, part of a field – in which you're expert.
只有两个前提条件即可：首先，你必须有自己擅长的某些领域，
It might be something in the arts – music before Vivaldi, for instance, or the epic poetry of Afghanistan.
它可能是艺术方面的——例如维瓦尔第之前存在的音乐，或者阿富汗的史诗。
On the whole, though, it's better if your speciality is a little more practical, intellectual but money-making.
当然，最好你的特长是颇具实用性的、智慧的，又能赚钱的。
Then to the speciality, whatever it is, you add a dedication to everything that is advance guard and an amused contempt for everything else that isn't.
第二，不管你擅长的是什么，你都应该是这个领域的先锋，不断深耕，而对其他东西非常蔑视。
You mustn't read the daily papers, or at a minimum you mustn't admit it if you do.
你绝不可以去读每日报纸，或者就算读了也不能承认。
No best-sellers, of course - that goes without saying, although you should read enough to be able to say it nauseated you so much you couldn't finish it.
当然不是畅销书。尽管这需要你已经读了足够的书，才能声称：哦这本书令人作呕，根本没法儿读。
Choice Four: Choice four, though, offers an alternative for those who cannot erase their political-social-economic consciousness. Join an extremist group.
选项四：给那些逃不开政治、社会、经济意识的人提供了一个选择：加入一个极端团体。
There is real effort involved in this at the very beginning.
在初期可能会付出许多努力。
You have to study the various groups that present themselves and make your initial commitment.
你可以遇见不同的人，他们会表达自己，帮助你做出选择。
The beauty of this choice, though, is that once you've made it, you can turn off your thinking and let yourself be carried by the forward surge of what is obviously a significant movement.
这个选项的好处在于，一旦加入了某个组织，你便永远不需要在思考了，你只需要任凭自己被前进的浪潮带动着，被动参与即可。
Choice Five: And then, finally, there's choice five.
选项五：最后的最后，就是选项五。
It's hard to state this one. About as close as I can come to it is this: Hang loose, but stay vibrantly alive.
这个选项说起来有些复杂，我能表达出来的最贴切的解释是：保持镇静，不急不躁，但依然有激情的活着。
This one's strenuous. This one's demanding.
这个选择是最费劲的，要求最高的。
Choice five would demand of you that you consider today's graduation no more than a pause to catch your breath before continuing the life-long job of education. It would demand of you that you be your own unique best self. And there is no higher demand that that.
选项五要求你，把今日的毕业看作是你继续一生学习事业之前的一次短暂停歇，他要求你成为最独特最优秀的自己，我觉得没有比这个更高的要求了。
Choice five entails wide-ranging reading and deep-probing thought.
选项五要求你，需要做大量广泛的阅读，进行深入的独立思考。
It calls for a contradictory thing - a mind that is constantly open to new facts that dictate change but at the same time is resolutely committed to what seems best at any given point of time.
他需要矛盾主义，一种对一切改变和新鲜事物的开放性态度，但同时又在任何时候，都坚决拥护时下最正确的选择。
It calls for human involvement, a compassionate concern for everyone on this fast-shrinking little planet of ours and for the generations to come.
选项五要求你去参与，对生活在这日益萎缩的小小星球上的每一个人，以及他们的下一代，给予慈悲和关注。
It calls for the resolute rejection of all stereotypes and insists on the thoughtful examination of even the most widely held assumptions that are too easily taken for granted.
选项五要求你，拒绝任何偏见和先入为主，并对那些已经被普遍认可的观点保持深刻的批判思维。
If only choice five involved only one thing or the other thought or action - it would be ever so much easier.
如果选项五只要求你的思想或行为，那就会很容易。
It doesn't, though. It involves both.
但是它需要两者兼顾。
And as if that weren't bad enough, this choice usually brings with it a certain amount of inner ache, because this way is a lonely way.
选择选项五的人，往往都带着一些内心折磨，因为这条路很孤独。
But those who make choice five are never fully comfortable.
而且不会很舒服。
They are nagged at by their realisation that they could be wrong.
他们会因为意识到自己错了而感到恼火。
They're prodded by their recognition that they've still so much more to learn and even more than that to understand.
他们会因为觉得自己还有太多东西要继续学习、思考而被深深刺痛。
They're made restless by their knowledge that no matter how much they do, there's still ever so much more left to be done.
无论他们已经汲取了多少知识，这世界上，仍然有很多事情等着他们去完成。
Choice-five people have to live constantly with an acceptance of the fact that there are no simple answers in this world because there are no simple questions.
选择五的人，只能不断接受一个事实：这个世界上没有简单的答案，因为这个世界上没有简单的问题。
This makes life exciting for them, challenging, at least intermittently rewarding.
对于他们，生活是如此的激动澎湃富有挑战，至少生活断断续续一直有所回报，一切都值得。
But comfortable?
但过得舒服吗？
No.
并不一定。
I would not urge choice five on any of you graduates.
我不会劝你们选择选项五。
It asks so much of you.
因为它的要求太多了。
Any of the other four will see you through to age 60 or 65, retirement, and a modest pension.
其他四个选项中的任何一个都能帮助你渡过难关，走到60或65岁，直到退休，拿到足够的退休金，
They might easily do better than that and make you rich. In dollars, that is.
这要比选项五容易完成得多，还能让你生活富裕。
Five is there, though, one of the multiple choices on the test.
选项五只是多项选择中的其中一个选项。
If any of you in this class makes that fifth choice, I wish you'd let me know about it.
选项五，如果在座的任何一位选择了选项五，我希望你能告诉我。
You I'd like to know better.
因为这个人，我愿意再多了解一点。
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