最近偶然看到这么一篇文章，对长久以来困扰自己的问题似乎略有启发：究竟该从事什么样工作，亦或是追寻什么样的道路。

新年伊始，闲暇时也和大学朋友或是美国同事们讨论起这篇短文，受益良多。中西教育虽是大相径庭，但我们所面对的困惑似乎是共同的。

所以想到把这篇文章分享给大家，希望有那么一点点作用~

此文来自2008年哈佛校长对本科毕业生的演讲，题为“在醒着的时间里，追求你认为最有意义的”

正文：

记住我们对你们寄予的厚望，就算你们觉得它们不可能实现，也要记住，它们至关重要，是你们人生的北极星，会指引你们到达对自己和世界都有意义的彼岸。你们生活的意义要由你们自己创造。

这 所备受尊崇的学校历来好学求知，所以你们期待我的演讲能传授永恒的智慧。我站在这个讲坛上，穿得像个清教徒牧师——这身打扮也许会把很多我的前任吓坏，还 可能会让其中一些人重新投身于消灭女巫的事业中去，让英克利斯和考特恩父子（1）出现在如今的“泡沫派对”上（2）。但现在，我在台上，你们在底 下，这是一个属于真理（3）、追求真理的时刻。

你们已经求学四年，而我当校长还不到一年；你们认识三任校长，我只认识一个班的大四学生。所以，智慧从何谈起呢？也许你们才是应该传授智慧的人。或许我们可以互换一下角色，用哈佛法学院教授们随机点名提问的方式，让我在接下来的一个小时里回答你们的问题（4）。

让 我们把这个毕业典礼想象成一个问答式环节，你们是提问者。“福斯特校长，生活的意义是什么？我们在哈佛苦读四年是为了什么？福斯特校长，从你四十年前大 学毕业到现在，你肯定学到了不少东西吧？”（四十年了。我可以大声承认这个时间，因为我生活的每一个细节——当然包括我获得布尔茅尔学位的年份——现在好 像都能公开查到。但请注意，当时我在班里还算岁数小的。）

可以这么说，在过去的一年里，你们一直在提出问题让我回答，只不过你们把提问范围限定得比较小。我也一直在思考应该怎样回答，还有你们提问的动机，这是我更感兴趣的。

其 实，从我与校委会见面时起，就一直被问到这些问题，当时是2007年冬天，我的任命才宣布不久。此后日渐频繁，我在柯克兰楼吃午饭，我在莱弗里特楼 吃晚饭，在我专门会见学生的工作时段，甚至我在国外遇见毕业生的时候，都会被问到这些问题。你们问我的第一件事不是问课程，不是教师辅导，不是教师的联系 方式，也不是学生学习生活的空间。实际上，甚至不是酒精限制政策。你们反复问我的是：“为什么我们很多人都去了华尔街？为什么我们哈佛毕业生中，有那么多人进入金融、咨询行业和投资银行？”

要 思考并回答这个问题，有很多方式。比如威利-萨顿式的。当他被问及为什么要抢银行时，他回答：“因为那儿有钱。”你们中很多人都在经济学课上见过克劳迪娅 -戈尔丁和拉里-卡茨两位教授，根据他们从70年代以来对学生择业的研究，得出的结论大同小异。他们发现，值得注意的是，虽然金融行业有极高的金钱回报， 还是有很多学生选择了其它工作。

确 实如此，你们中有37个人已经和“为美国而教”签约（5）；有一个会去跳探戈，去阿根廷研究舞蹈疗法；还有一个将投身于肯尼亚的农业发展；一个拿了 数学荣誉学位的人要去研究诗歌；另一个要去美国空军受训当飞行员；还有一个要与乳癌作斗争。你们中有很多人会去读法律、医学、或其他研究生。但是，绝大多 数人选择了金融和咨询，这与戈尔丁和卡茨的调查结果不谋而合。《克里姆森报》（6）对去年的毕业班作了调查，结果表明，参加工作的人中，58%的男生和 43％的女生做出了上述选择。虽然今年经济不景气，这个数字还是达到了39%。

高额的薪水、几乎难以拒绝的招聘方、能与朋友一起在纽约工作、享受生活，以及有趣的工作——有很多种理由可以解释这些选择。你们中的一些人本来就决定过这样子的生活，至少在一两年之内是这样。另一些人则认为先要利己才能利人。但是，你们还是问我，为什么要走这条路。

在某种程度上，我觉得自己更关心的是你们为什么问这些问题，而不是给出答案。如果戈尔丁和卡茨教授的结论是正确的；如果金融行业的确就是“理性的选择”，那么你们为什么还是不停地问我这个问题呢？为什么这个看似理性的选择，会让你们许多人觉得难以理解、不尽合理，甚至在某种意义上是出于被迫或必须， 而非自愿呢？为什么这个问题会困扰你们这么多人呢？

我 认为，你们问我的其实是生活的意义，只不过你们提出的问题是经过伪装的——提问角度是高级职业选择中可观察、可度量的现象，而不是抽象的、难以理解 的、令人尴尬的形而上学范畴。“生活的意义”——是个大大的问题——又是老生常谈——把它看成蒙提派森（7）的某部电影的讽刺标题或者某一集《辛普森一 家》（8）的主题就容易回答，但是当作蕴含严肃意义的话题就把问题复杂化了。

但是，暂时抛开我们哈佛人自以为是的圆滑、沉着和无懈可击，试着探寻一下你们问题的答案。

我认为，你们之所以担心，是因为你们不想自己的生活只是传统意义上的成功，而且还要有意义。但你们又不知道如何协调这两个目标。你们不知道在一家有着金字招牌的公司里干着一份起薪丰厚的工作，加上可以预见的未来的财富，是否能满足你们的内心。

你 们为什么担心？这多少是我们学校的错。从一进校门，我们就告诉你们，你们会成为对未来负责的领袖，你们是最优秀、最聪明的是我们的依靠，你们会改变 整个世界。我们对你们寄予厚望，反而成了你们的负担。其实，你们已经取得了非凡的成绩：你们参与各种课外活动，表现出服务精神；你们大力提倡可持续发展， 透露出你们对这个星球未来的关注；你们积极参与今年的总统竞选，为美国政治注入了新的活力。

而现在，你们中有许多人不知道如何把以上这些成绩与择业结合起来。是否一定要在有利益的工作和有意义的工作之间做出抉择？如果必须选择，你们会选哪个？有没有可能两者兼得呢？

你 们问我和问自己的是一些最根本的问题：关于价值、关于试图调和有潜在冲突的东西、关于对鱼与熊掌不可兼得的认识。你们正处在一个转变的时刻，需要做出抉 择。只能选一个选项——工作、职业、读研——都意味着要放弃其他选项。每一个决定都意味着有得有失——一扇门打开了，另一扇却关上了。你们问我的问题差不 多就是这样——关于舍弃的人生道路。

金 融业、华尔街和“招聘”已经变成了这个两难困境的标志，代表着一系列问题，其意义要远比选择一条职业道路宽广和深刻。某种意义上，这些是你们所有人 早晚都会遇到的问题——当你从医学院毕业并选择专业方向——是选全科家庭医生还是选皮肤科医生；当你获得法学学位之后，要选择是去一家公司工作，还是做公 共辩护律师；当你在“为美国而教”进修两年以后，要决定是否继续从事教育。你们担心，是因为你们既想活得有意义，又想活得成功；你们清楚，你们所受的教育是让你们不仅为自己，为自己的舒适和满足，更要为你们身边的世界创造价值。而现在，你们必须想出一个方法，去实现这一目标。

我认为，你们之所以担心，还有另一个原因——和第一个原因有关，但又不完全相同。那就是，你们想过得幸福。你们趋之若鹜地选修“积极心理学”——心理 学1504——和“幸福的科学”，想找到秘诀。但我们怎样才能找到幸福呢？我可以给出一个鼓舞人心的答案：长大。调查表明，年长的人——比如我这个岁数的 人——幸福感比年轻人更强。不过，你们可能不愿意等待。

我 听过你们谈论面临的种种选择，所以我知道你们对成功和幸福的关系感到烦恼——或者更准确地说，如何定义成功，才能使之产生并包含真正的幸福，而不只 是金钱和名望。你们担心经济回报最多的选择，可能不是最有意义或最令人满意的。但你们想知道自己到底应该怎样生存，不论是作为艺术家、演员、公务员还是高 中老师？你们要怎样找到一条通向新闻业的道路？在不知道多少年之后，完成了研究生学业和论文，你们会找到英语教授的工作吗？

答案是：只有试过了才知道。但是，不论是绘画、生物还是金融，如果你不去尝试做你喜欢的事；如果你不去追求你认为最有意义的东西，你会后悔的。人生之路很长，总有时间去实施备选方案，但不要一开始就退而求其次。

我将其称为择业停车位理论，几十年来一直在与同学们分享。不要因为觉得肯定没有停车位了，就把车停在距离目的地20个街区远的地方。直接去你想去的地方，如果车位已满，再绕回来。

你 们可能喜欢投行、金融或咨询，它可能就是你的最佳选择。也许你们和我在柯克兰楼吃午饭时遇到的那个大四学生一样，她刚从西海岸一家知名咨询公司面试 回来。她问：“我为什么要做这行？我讨厌坐飞机，我不喜欢住酒店，我不会喜欢这个工作的。”那就找个你喜欢的工作。要是你在醒着的时间里超过一半都在做你 不喜欢的事情，你是很难感到幸福的。

但是，最最重要的是，你们问问题，既是在问我，更是在问你们自己。你们在选择道路，同时又质疑自己的选择。你知道自己想要什么样的生活，只是不知确定 自己所选的路对不对。这是最好的消息。这也是，我希望，从某种程度上说，我们的错。关注你的生活，对其进行反思，思考怎样才能好好地生活，想想怎样对社会有用：这些也许就是人文教育传授给你们的最宝贵的东西。

人 文教育要求你们自觉地生活，赋予你寻找和定义所做之事的内在意义的能力。它使你学会自我分析和评判，让你从容把握自己的生活，并掌控其发展路径。正是在这 个意义上，“人文”才是名副其实的liberare ——自由（9）。它们赋予你开展行动、发现事物意义和作出选择的能力。通向有意义、幸福生活的必由之路是让自己为之努力奋斗。不要停歇。随时准备着改变方 向。记住我们对你们寄予的厚望，就算你们觉得它们不可能实现，也要记住，它们至关重要，是你们人生的北极星，会指引你们到达对自己和世界都有意义的彼岸。 你们生活的意义要由你们自己创造。

我迫不及待地想知道你们会变成什么样子。一定要经常回来，告诉我们过得如何。

译者注：

（1）Increase and Cotton：英克利斯和考特恩父子，都是著名清教徒牧师。Increase Mather 曾任哈佛大学管理层成员，并参加1692年塞勒姆巫师审判案。其子Cotton Mather。
（2）Mather lather：哈佛大学每年春天举行的全校性泡沫派对，即用泡沫机喷射泡沫铺满大厅地面，参加者身穿泳装跳舞狂欢。在本文中是假设，指如果在以 前，Increase and Cotton父子会参加泡沫派对这一另人颇感神秘的活动，去消灭女巫，即校长本人。
（3）Veritas：拉丁文，真理，也是哈佛大学校训。
（4）cold call：营销人员打给陌生客户推销商品的电话。与之相对的是warm call，指打给相识客户的推销电话。在文中，特指哈佛法学院的教授会在课上随机点名让学生回答问题。
（5）Teach For America：为美国而教，一个教育组织，旨在消除美国某些地区的教育不公平现象。
（6）Crimson：指The Harvard Crimson，《克里姆森报》，哈佛大学学生主办的校报。
（7）Monty Python：英国六人喜剧团体。
（8）Simpsons：《辛普森一家》，美国电视史上播放时间最长的动画片。
（9）原文中liberal education（人文教育）里的liberal源自于拉丁文liberare，意思是to free，使自由。

英文原文：

June 3, 2008  |  Cambridge, Mass.

As prepared for delivery

In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom. Here I am in a pulpit, dressed like a Puritan minister — an apparition that would have horrified many of my distinguished forebears and perhaps rededicated some of them to the extirpation of witches. This moment would have propelled Increase and Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” But here I am and there you are and it is the moment of and for Veritas.

You have been undergraduates for four years. I have been president for not quite one. You have known three presidents; I one senior class. Where then lies the voice of experience? Maybe you should be offering the wisdom. Perhaps our roles could be reversed and I could, in Harvard Law School style, do cold calls for the next hour or so.

We all do seem to have made it to this point — more or less in one piece. Though I recently learned that we have not provided you with dinner since May 22. I know we need to wean you from Harvard in a figurative sense. I never knew we took it quite so literally.

But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment. Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions. “What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?” (Forty years. I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available. But please remember I was young for my class.)

In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year. On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly. And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.

Let me explain. It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007. Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad. The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space. In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy. Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking?

There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it. There is the Willie Sutton approach. You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies. They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else. Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America; one of you will dance tango and work in dance therapy in Argentina; another will be engaged in agricultural development in Kenya; another, with an honors degree in math, will study poetry; another will train as a pilot with the USAF; another will work to combat breast cancer. Numbers of you will go to law school, medical school, and graduate school. But, consistent with the pattern Goldin and Katz have documented, a considerable number of you are selecting finance and consulting. The Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice. This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.

High salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut, the reassurance for many of you that you will be in New York working and living and enjoying life alongside your friends, the promise of interesting work — there are lots of ways to explain these choices. For some of you, it is a commitment for only a year or two in any case. Others believe they will best be able to do good by first doing well. Yet, you ask me why you are following this path.

I find myself in some ways less interested in answering your question than in figuring out why you are posing it. If Professors Goldin and Katz have it right; if finance is indeed the “rational choice,” why do you keep raising this issue with me? Why does this seemingly rational choice strike a number of you as not understandable, as not entirely rational, as in some sense less a free choice than a compulsion or necessity? Why does this seem to be troubling so many of you?

You are asking me, I think, about the meaning of life, though you have posed your question in code — in terms of the observable and measurable phenomenon of senior career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics. The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché — easier to deal with as the ironic title of a Monty Python movie or the subject of a Simpsons episode than as a matter about which one would dare admit to harboring serious concern.

But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.

I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally successful, but to be meaningful, and you are not sure how those two goals fit together. You are not sure if a generous starting salary at a prestigious brand name organization together with the promise of future wealth will feed your soul.

Why are you worried? Partly it is our fault. We have told you from the moment you arrived here that you will be the leaders responsible for the future, that you are the best and the brightest on whom we will all depend, that you will change the world. We have burdened you with no small expectations. And you have already done remarkable things to fulfill them: your dedication to service demonstrated in your extracurricular engagements, your concern about the future of the planet expressed in your vigorous championing of sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.

But many of you are now wondering how these commitments fit with a career choice. Is it necessary to decide between remunerative work and meaningful work? If it were to be either/or, which would you choose? Is there a way to have both?

You are asking me and yourselves fundamental questions about values, about trying to reconcile potentially competing goods, about recognizing that it may not be possible to have it all. You are at a moment of transition that requires making choices. And selecting one option — a job, a career, a graduate program — means not selecting others. Every decision means loss as well as gain — possibilities foregone as well as possibilities embraced. Your question to me is partly about that — about loss of roads not taken.

Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, representing a set of issues that is much broader and deeper than just one career path. These are issues that in one way or another will at some point face you all — as you graduate from medical school and choose a specialty — family practice or dermatology, as you decide whether to use your law degree to work for a corporate firm or as a public defender, as you decide whether to stay in teaching after your two years with TFA. You are worried because you want to have both a meaningful life and a successful one; you know you were educated to make a difference not just for yourself, for your own comfort and satisfaction, but for the world around you. And now you have to figure out the way to make that possible.

I think there is a second reason you are worried — related to but not entirely distinct from the first. You want to be happy. You have flocked to courses like “Positive Psychology” — Psych 1504 — and “The Science of Happiness” in search of tips. But how do we find happiness? I can offer one encouraging answer: get older. Turns out that survey data show older people — that is, my age — report themselves happier than do younger ones. But perhaps you don’t want to wait.

As I have listened to you talk about the choices ahead of you, I have heard you articulate your worries about the relationship of success and happiness — perhaps, more accurately, how to define success so that it yields and encompasses real happiness, not just money and prestige. The most remunerative choice, you fear, may not be the most meaningful and the most satisfying. But you wonder how you would ever survive as an artist or an actor or a public servant or a high school teacher? How would you ever figure out a path by which to make your way in journalism? Would you ever find a job as an English professor after you finished who knows how many years of graduate school and dissertation writing?

The answer is: you won’t know till you try. But if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance; if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But don’t begin with it.

I think of this as my parking space theory of career choice, and I have been sharing it with students for decades. Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never find a space. Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be.

You may love investment banking or finance or consulting. It might be just right for you. Or, you might be like the senior I met at lunch at Kirkland who had just returned from an interview on the West Coast with a prestigious consulting firm. “Why am I doing this?” she asked. “I hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t like this job.” Find work you love. It is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you don’t.

But what is ultimately most important here is that you are asking the question — not just of me but of yourselves. You are choosing roads and at the same time challenging your own choices. You have a notion of what you want your life to be and you are not sure the road you are taking is going to get you there. This is the best news. And it is also, I hope, to some degree, our fault. Noticing your life, reflecting upon it, considering how you can live it well, wondering how you can do good: These are perhaps the most valuable things that a liberal arts education has equipped you to do. A liberal education demands that you live self-consciously. It prepares you to seek and define the meaning inherent in all you do. It has made you an analyst and critic of yourself, a person in this way supremely equipped to take charge of your life and how it unfolds. It is in this sense that the liberal arts are liberal — as in liberare — to free. They empower you with the possibility of exercising agency, of discovering meaning, of making choices. The surest way to have a meaningful, happy life is to commit yourself to striving for it. Don’t settle. Be prepared to change routes. Remember the impossible expectations we have of you, and even as you recognize they are impossible, remember how important they are as a lodestar guiding you toward something that matters to you and to the world. The meaning of your life is for you to make.

I can’t wait to see how you all turn out. Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.

- Drew Gilpin Faust