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歐巴馬的激勵演說，聽抄以致敬之
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You write your own destiny.
You make your own future.
My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mom who had to work and who stuggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us the things that other kids had.
There were times when I missed having a father in my life, there were times when I was lonely and I felt like I didn't fit in, so I wasn't always focused as I should have been on school, and I did some things that I am not proud of and I got in more trouble than I should have, and my life could have easily taken a turn for the worst. But I was lucky, I got a lot of second chances and I have the opportunity to go to college in law school and follow my dreams.
My wife our first lady Michelle Obama, she has a similar story, neither of her parents had gone the college, and they didn't have a lot of money, but they worked hard and she worked hard so that she could go to the best schools in this country, but some of you might not have those advantages, maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need, every single one of you has something that you're good at, every single one of you has something to offer, and you have the responsibility to yourself to dicover what that is, you've got to train for it, and work for it, and learn for it, there is no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you're end up, no one's written your destiny for you because you write your own destiny, you make your own future. But whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it, I want you to realy work at it. I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can be rich and succesful without any hard work, that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, chances are you're not going to be any of those things, the truth is BEING SUCCESSFUL IS HARD, and you won't necessarily succeed at everything.
The first time you try, that's OK, some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who's had the most failures, J.K.Rowling who wrote Harry Potter, her first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times before it was finally published, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, he lost hunrdred of games, and missed thousnads of shots, during his career. But he once said I have failed over and over and over again in my life, and that's why I succeed. These people succeeded because thay understood that you can't let your failures define you, you gave to let your failures teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently the next time. So if you get into trouble, that doesn't mean you're a trouble maker, it means you need to TRY HARDER TO ACT RIGHT.
If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to SPEND MORE TIME STUDING. No one's born being good at all things, you become good at things through hard work. You are not at varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport, you don't hit every note the first time you sing a song, you've got to practice. Don't be afraid to ask questions, don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it, I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength, because it shows youe have the courage to admit when you don't know something and that then allows you to leanr somthing new. So find an adult that you trust, a parent, a grandparent or a teacher, a coach or a counselor and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals. And even when you're struggling, even you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you, DON'T EVER GIVE UP ON YOURSELF.
Isn't about people who quit when things got tough, it's about people who kept going who tried harder. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do, I expect great things for each of you, so don't let us down, don't let your family down, or your country down, most of all don't let yourself down.
In the face of these challenges, it may be tempting to fall back on the formulas for success that have been pedaled, so frequently in recent yours, it goes something like this, you are taught to chase after the big money and you figure out how big yopur corner office is, you worry about whether you have a fancy enough title or a fancy enough car, that's the message that sent each and every day or has been in our culture for far too long that through material possessions through a ruthless competition pursued only one your own behalf that's how you will measure success. Now you can take that road and it may work for some, but at this critical juncture in ur nation's history at this difficult time let me suggest that such an approach won't get you where you want to go, it display a poverty of ambition that in fact the elevation of appearance over substance of celebrity over character of short term gains over lasting achievment is precisely what your gereration needs to help end.
I want you to remember that each of us is only here because somebody SOMEWHERE INVESTED IN OUR SUCCESS, SOMEBODY INVESTED IN US. I know that's true for me, I was raised by a single mom with the help of my grandparents, we didn't have a lot of money growing up at tims we struggled. When my mom was going to school at the some time as she was raising my sister and me, yeah we had to scrape to get by, bit we had a family who loved me and my sister, and I had teachers who cared about me and ultimately with the help of the community and a country that supported me, I was able to get a good education, and I was able to get grants and student loans, and opportunity opened up and all of this happened because people saw something in me that I didn't always see in myself. The point is a lot of people made an investment in you, I can't imagine a better investment. But as you experence your success and as you experence setbacks, you need to remember everything that's been put into making sure that you had opportunity. You are going to also have to give back, this is simple, but perhaps most important persever, nothin worthwhile is easy, they learn from mistakes, they don't quit.
You know when I first arrived on this campus it was with little money, fewer options, but it was here that I try to find my place in this world. I knew I want to make a difference but it was big, how in fact I'd go about it. But I wanted to do my part to shape a better world, so even as I worked after graduation a few unfufilling jobs here in New York, I will not list them all.
Even as I went from motley apartment to motley apartment, I reached out and I started to write letters to community organizations all cross the country, and one day the small group of churches on the south side of chicogo answer offering me work with people in neighborhoods hit hard by steel mills that were shutting down, and communities where jobs were dying away. The community had been plagued by gang violence, so once I arrived one of the first things we tried to do was to mobilize a meeting with community leaders to deal with gangs and I had worked for weeks on this project. We invited the police, we made phone calls, we went to churches, we passed out flyers. The night of the meeting, we arranged rows and rows of chairs, and anticipation of this crawd and we waited and finally a group of older folks walked into the hall and they sat down and this little old lady raised her hand and asked me, is this where the bingo game is? It was a disaster, nobody showed up. My first community meeting, nobody showed up, and later the volunteers I worked with told me, that's it, we're quitting. They'd been doing this for 2 years even before I had arrived, they had nothing to show for it, and I'll be honest I felt pretty discouraged as well, I didn't know what I was doing, I thought about quitting. And as we were talking I looked outside and I saw some young boys playing in a vacant lot accross the street, and they were just throwing rocks up at a boldered building, it had nothing better to do, late at night just throwing rocks. I said to the volunteers, before you quit, answer one question, what will happen to those boys if you quit? who will fight for them if we don't? who will give them a fair shot if we leave? And one by one the volunteers decided not to quit, and we went back to those neighborhoods, and we kept at it, and we registered new voters, and we set up after school programs, and we fought for new jobs, help people live lives with some measure of dignity and we sustained ourselves with those small victories, we didn't set the world on fire, some of those communities are still very poor, there's still a lot of gangs out there, but I believe that it was those small victories that helped me win the bigger victories. Of my three and a half yours as president, and I wish I could say that this perserverance came from some innate toughness in me but the truth is was learned. I got it from watching the people who raised me, more specifically I got it from watching the women who shaped my life. I grow up as the son of a single mom who struggle to put herself through school and make end meet, she had marrige that fell apart even went on food stamps at one point to help us get by, but she didn't quit, and she earned her degree and make sure that through scholarships and hard work, my sister and I earned ours. She used to wake me up when we were living overseas, wake me up before dawn to study my English lessons, and when I complained, she'd just look at me and say, this is no picnic for me either bastard. And my mom ended up, dedicating herself to help women around the world access the money they needed to start their own businesses. She was an early pioneer in micro financing, and that meant though that who was gone a lot, and she had her own struggles trying to figure out balancing motherhood and a career, and when she was gone, my grandmother stepped up to take care of me. She only had a high school education, shoe got a job ay a local bank, she hit the glass ceiling and watched the men she once trained promoted up the ladder ahead of her, but she didn't quit. Rather than grow, hard or angery each time, she got passed over, she kept going doing her job as best as she knew how, and ultimately ended up being vice president of that bank. She didn't quit.
Those are the folks who inspire me, people ask me sometimes who aspires you Mr. Predisent? Those quiet heroes all accross this country, some of your parents and grandparents who are sitting here, no fanfare, no articles written about them, they just persever, they just do their jobs, they meet their responsibilities, they don't quit. I'm only here because of them, they may not have set out to change the world, but in small important ways they did. They certainly changed mine, so whether it's starting a business or running for office, or raising an amzing family, remember that making your mark on the world is hard, it takes patience, it takes commitment, it comes with plenty of setbacks, and it comes with a plenty of failures. But whenever you feel that creeping cynicism, whenever you hear those voices say you can't make a difference, whenever somebody tells you to set your sight lower, previous genertions should give you hope, what young generations have done before should give you hope.
If you're ready to fight for that brilliant, radically simple idea of America, but no matter who you are or what you look like, YOU CAN STILL PURSUDE YOUR OWN HAPINESS. I will join you every step of the way.
跳蚤，聽抄於 2023/2/24
