By+Sheryl+Sandberg
Thank you, Marie. And thank you esteemed members of the faculty, proud parents, devoted friends, squirming siblings.2
Congratulations to all of you…and especially to the magnificent Berkeley graduating class of 2016!
It is a privilege to be here at Be rkeley, which has produced so many Nobel Prize winners, Turing Award winners, astronauts, members of Congress,3 Olympic gold medalists…and thats just the women!
Berkeley has always been ahead of the times. In the 1960s, you led the Free Speech Movement4. Early on, Berkeley opened its doors to the entire population.
One of the women who came here in search of opportunity was Rosalind Nuss. She was pulled out of high school by her parents to help support their family. One of her teachers insisted that her parents put her back into school—and in 1937, she sat where you are sitting today and received a Berkeley degree. Roz was my grandmother. She was a huge inspiration to me and Im so grateful that Berkeley recognized her potential.
Today is a day of celebration. A day to celebrate all the hard work that got you to this moment.
Today is a day of thanks. A day to thank those who helped you get here.
Today is a day of reflection5. Because today marks the end of one era of your life and the beginning of something new.
Today will be a bit different. We will still do the caps6 and you still have to do the photos. Today I will try to tell you what I learned in death.
I have never spoken publicly about this before. Its hard. One year and 13 days ago, I lost my husband, Dave. His death was sudden and unexpected. His death changed me in very profound7 ways. I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality8 of loss. And I also learned that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again.9
Im sharing this with you in the hopes that today, as you take the next step in your life, you can learn the lessons that I only learned in death.
Everyone who has made it through Cal has already experienced some disappointment. You wanted an A but you got a B. OK, lets be honest—you got an A—but youre still mad. You applied for an internship at Facebook, but you only got one from Google. She was the love of your life… but then she swiped left.10
The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days—the times that challenge you to your very core—that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.
Im pleased to tell you that after spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that there are three Ps—personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence—that are critical to how we bounce back from hardship.11
The first P is personalization—the belief that we are at fault12. This is different from taking responsibility, which you should always do. This is the lesson that not everything that happens to us happens because of us.13
When Dave died, I had a very common reaction, which was to blame myself. He died in seconds from a cardiac arrhythmia14. I poured over his medical records asking what I could have—or should have—done. It wasnt until I learned about the three Ps that I accepted that I could not have prevented his death.
The second P is pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of your life. Theres no place to run or hide from the all-consuming15 sadness.
My psychologists encouraged me to get my kids back to their routine as soon as possible. So 10 days after Dave died, they went back to school and I went back to work. I remember sitting in my first Facebook meeting, I got drawn into a discussion and for a second—a brief split second16—I forgot about death.
The third P is permanence—the belief that the sorrow will last forever. For months, no matter what I did, it felt like the crushing17 grief would always be there.
We feel anxious—and then we feel anxious that were anxious. We feel sad—and then we feel sad that were sad. Instead, we should accept our feelings—but recognize that they will not last forever.
None of you need me to explain the fourth P…which is, of course, pizza from Cheese Board18.
Finding gratitude and appreciation is key to resilience.19 People who take the time to list things they are grateful for are happier and healthier. It turns out that counting your blessings can actually increase your blessings.20 My New Years resolution21 this year is to write down three moments of joy before I go to bed each night. This simple practice has changed my life. Last month, 11 days before the anniversary of Daves death, I broke down crying to a friend of mine. I said: “Eleven days. One year ago, he had 11 days left. And we had no idea.” We looked at each other through tears, and asked how we would live if we knew we had 11 days left.
As you graduate, can you ask yourselves to live as if you had 11 days left? I dont mean blow everything off22 and party all the time—although tonight is an exception. I mean live with the understanding of how precious every single day would be. How precious every day actually is.
It is the greatest irony of my life that losing my husband helped me find deeper gratitude—gratitude for the kindness of my friends, the love of my family, the laughter of my children.23 My hope for you is that you can find that gratitude—not just on the good days, like today, but on the hard ones, when you will really need it.
There are so many moments of joy ahead of you. That trip you always wanted to take. A first kiss with someone you really like. The day you get a job doing something you truly believe in. Beating Stanford. (Go Bears!24) All of these things will happen to you. Enjoy each and every one.
Class of 2016, as you leave Berkeley, build resilience.
You have the whole world in front of you. I cant wait to see what you do with it.
Congratulations, and Go Bears!
1. UC Berkeley: 加州大學(xué)伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley),簡稱伯克利(Cal),位于美國舊金山灣區(qū)伯克利市,是世界著名公立研究型大學(xué)。迄今伯克利共走出了73位諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)得主、13位菲爾茲獎(jiǎng)得主和22位圖靈獎(jiǎng)得主。
2. esteemed: 受人尊敬的;faculty: 全體教員;squirming: 扭動(dòng)的,局促不安的;sibling: 兄弟姐妹。
3. privilege:(個(gè)人的)恩典,殊榮;Turing驅(qū)、英國科學(xué)家艾倫·麥席森·圖靈,由美國計(jì)算機(jī)協(xié)會(huì)于1966年設(shè)立,專門獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)對計(jì)算機(jī)事業(yè)做出重要貢獻(xiàn)的個(gè)人,是計(jì)算機(jī)界最負(fù)盛名、最崇高的一個(gè)獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng),有“計(jì)算機(jī)界的諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)”之稱;astronaut: 宇航員;Congress: 國會(huì)。
4. Free Speech Movement: 自由言論運(yùn)動(dòng),20世紀(jì)60年代興起于美國加州大學(xué)的學(xué)生運(yùn)動(dòng)。
5. reflection: 沉思,回顧。
6. do the caps: 扔帽子,畢業(yè)禮結(jié)束時(shí),學(xué)生會(huì)開心忘形地把學(xué)士帽拋向半空。
7. profound: 深刻的,意義深遠(yuǎn)的。
8. brutality: 殘忍。
9. 我也明白了,當(dāng)生活將你吞沒,你能做的就是觸底反彈,奮力游出水面再次呼吸。suck: 使卷入,吞沒。
10. 你全心全意地愛著她,她卻不喜歡你。swipe left:左滑。一些交友軟件會(huì)通過左右滑動(dòng)來表示喜歡或不喜歡。這里指不喜歡。
11. setback: 挫折,倒退;psychologist: 心理學(xué)家;Martin Seligman: 馬丁·塞利格曼(1942— ),美國心理學(xué)家,獲美國應(yīng)用與預(yù)防心理學(xué)會(huì)終身成就獎(jiǎng),1998年當(dāng)選為美國心理學(xué)會(huì)主席;personalization: 人格化,個(gè)性化;pervasiveness: 遍布,到處彌漫;permanence: 永久,持久;critical: 至關(guān)重要的;bounce back: 彈回,跳回。
12. at fault: 有責(zé)任,有過失。
13. 這個(gè)教訓(xùn)就是,所有發(fā)生在我們身上的事并非都是因我們而起。
14. cardiac arrhythmia: 心律失常。
15. all-consuming: 吞噬一切的。
16. split second: 一瞬間。
17. crushing: 壓倒性的。
18. Cheese Board: Cheese Board Pizza是位于伯克利的一家有名的披薩店,以每天只提供一種口味的披薩來保證最時(shí)令最新鮮而聞名。
19. gratitude: 感激之情;resilience:復(fù)原能力。
20. 常常歷數(shù)自己擁有的幸運(yùn)真的能積攢福德。blessing: 幸運(yùn),恩惠。
21. resolution: 決心。
22. blow off: 撒手不管,逃避。
23. 這真是我此生最大的諷刺,失去丈夫反而幫我獲得了更深的感恩之心——感謝朋友們的好意,感謝家人的愛,感謝孩子們的歡笑。irony: 具有諷刺意味的事,出乎意料的事。
24. Go Bears: 加油金熊隊(duì)!Bears指California Golden Bears(金熊隊(duì)),成立于1907年,是太平洋十聯(lián)盟(Pacific-10)的成員,代表加州大學(xué)伯克利分校參加國家大學(xué)體育協(xié)會(huì)(NCAA)第一級別的眾多體育賽事。