Tired of Harvard, Yale and Stanford-style graduation chicken soup; Tired of the theme of panacea: follow one's inclinations, be yourself, pursue passion, and the future is infinite; Tired of noise and agitation, anxiety and chicken blood. The first "convent university" in the United States, the University of Chicago's graduation speech with a different style, brought a clean stream to the education sector and was a bitter medicine for the spirit!

David Brooks, a The New York Times columnist and a famous American public intellectual, graduated from the History Department of the University of Chicago.

Thinking and intimacy

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My first thought is that since this is the University of Chicago, it is definitely not a simple open day. Maybe it should be an open day for class struggle, with people dressed as Marx and Engels hanging out, or students wearing Betty Friedman T-shirts to celebrate racial, class and gender freedom.

On this occasion today, a famous university will invite a famous person who has achieved great success to give you a speech and tell you that success is not important.

Well-known universities often invite billionaires to give speeches to tell you what you can learn from failure. From this kind of speech, you will realize how amazing failure is. Of course, you have to be Jobs or J.K. Rowling.

Then guests like us should give you some bad street advice: follow your heart and be yourself. Chase your passion, your future is infinite and so on.

Today I'm going to tell you how to deal with this chicken soup.

? But then again, I'm not here to cook a pot of stylized chicken soup. This is Chicago. This is the only opportunity in my life to give a speech to the graduates of my alma mater. Zhida left a deep impression on me.

So today I want to tell you two things: what the University of Chicago has taught me and what it has not taught me, so I must teach myself.

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When I was studying at the University of Chicago, I remember being beaten dizzy several times. I was surprised once in my freshman year. I read a book "Tragic Death" written by Nietzsche in the A floor of the Regenstein Library in Chicago.

I don't know what happened. The driving force of Nietzsche's almost crazy thoughts, and his prose that can cause emotional ups and downs like magic. In short, when reading that book, the line between fiction and fact blurred. I can't tell where I am and who I am. I don't feel the passage of time, I feel that time is completely still. A few hours passed, and I seemed to get into that book.

? I feel that I am not reading, but wrapped in the torrent of prose, and violent thoughts are washing me. I feel like I'm dissolving, I'm out of my body, I'm somewhere else, and I'm absorbed. Vaguely, admiration arises spontaneously, as if from the mouth of a half-madman who has long died.

The University of Chicago gave me a taste of the profoundness of human civilization. It ignited many desires in my heart, and I never had a higher level of desire.

First of all, I am eager to see. Seeing reality clearly seems to be the most obvious thing. Just open your eyes and you can see the world. But people who care about political discussions and other fields know that too many people look at the world from a distorted perspective, too many people just want to see what they want to see, or they can only see the world that has been processed by their own filters such as depression, fear, insecurity or narcissism.

Sometimes I think Trump's nightmare of being elected president reflects the reality of the collapse of the virtue of seeking knowledge.

John ruskin once wrote: "The more I think deeply, the more inclined I am to come to the conclusion that the greatest thing that human beings can do is to tell what they see truthfully. A thousand people say that it is better to think than one person, and a thousand people think that it is better to see than one person. " .

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The second desire is the desire for wisdom. I can't tell you what wisdom is made of, nor can I tell you the exact definition of wisdom. But when we see wisdom, we will recognize it. Humanity, elegance and firmness rooted in the heart are reflected in the wise. He can look at the defects of others through love and tolerance; He can point out the core of any problem; Looking around the fields, we can see the power of cohesion and what we can't force.

In my opinion, to have this wisdom, we need to sincerely care for the people around us, we need to reflect on ourselves often in loneliness, and we need to read great works; We need to jump out of our times, jump out of our existing prejudices and embark on a lifelong journey of understanding.

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Third, Zhida gave me a desire for my ideal. Sometimes people will say that the purpose of life is to seek happiness. We seek the satisfaction of our own desires. Of course, this is not true. Peace and happiness are only temporary beauty, and soon people begin to get tired of it. "What human emotions seem to need," william james once wrote, "is to be able to see the scene of struggle all the time. The moment the fruit was swallowed, the satisfaction was contemptible. With sweat and hard work, human nature bears extreme pressure and is miserable. However, after this robbery, it refused to enjoy success, but embarked on a more inaccessible and difficult journey-it is this kind of thing that inspires us. "

James summed it up well. There is an eternal theme in human existence: everyone's pain paves the way for the pursuit of the highest ideal.

We don't talk much about the soul in the secular world, but sometimes we don't care whether anyone likes it on Facebook, how much we earn every year, or even whether we are red or not. At this time, we are pursuing something eternal. Pursuing beauty, truth, justice, transcendence and home. This is the embodiment of our moral values, and it is also a place where each of us should be respected and enjoy dignity.

Zhida University makes you yearn to climb the peak and keep climbing towards the peak of human existence.

After this battle, you will never be satisfied with staying on the ground, just brushing Twitter or even reading newspapers or reality shows.

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At present, in this country, we are experiencing a crisis about ultimate meaning. Many people have no clear understanding of their goals and objectives. They don't know what they are chasing or what basic beliefs they follow. They receive scientific research training from universities in their respective professional fields. Universities teach them how to do things, but not why. The university didn't provide them with a forum to ask questions. How should I live? What is my mission? Why did I come here?

When they leave college, they enter the real world, a busy world. Thousands of emails have to be answered, and they are planning their careers and starting a family non-stop. All these make people unable to focus on the problems related to the meaning and purpose of life.

I see many people don't even think about the topic of virtue.

They are not in a good moral ecology, and they are rarely exposed to ideas that can guide them.

This has caused great emotional vulnerability. Our friend Nietzsche once said that if you know what you were born for, you can accept everything. But if you don't know your mission, even the first failure or setback can put you in a crisis and make you completely collapse.

"From the point of view of meaning and morality, this is a generation that has inherited nothingness. The evil consequences of the ultimate crisis are reflected in the increase of suicide rate and drug addiction. You see the lack of social trust, and many people live in isolation and drift. "

? When you come to Chicago, it means that you will be guided by a kind of guidance, which is slightly different from the mainstream culture and goes against the current. It is not easy to live superficially. You may not know the meaning of life or your mission, but you know that the mountains are waiting for you to explore, and many answers to life are in that wonderful exhibition hall. Knowledge will give you great comfort and make you calm.

Zhida's life is not full of happiness every day. But it will give you a glimpse of the happiness of the greater self and the grand plan of the long journey of mankind. If you feel the joy of this self, because you know that its ultimate concern is the meaning, sacredness and beauty of life, then you can naturally bear the daily pain better.

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When I was at school, I may still be like this today. The University of Chicago doesn't teach students how to establish close interpersonal relationships. As I grew older, I began to realize that the ability to establish intimate relationships is one of the important skills to promote a complete life.

This is because the primary challenge in life is not the challenge of knowledge, but the challenge of motivation. Life is not only about knowing what is good, but also about investing with love and blood.

Life lies in loving your spouse and family passionately, and making them glow with inner love. Life lies in firmly loving one's career, serving one's beloved community and devoutly loving one's philosophy or God.

A complete life is a process from open choice to sweet dedication. It is that you refuse thousands of times, just to do something you care deeply, and you are willing to tie yourself to something you love. Although you tie yourself to them, they will set you free.

This kind of love is not just platonic ideal love, but really integrates inner love into daily life. Share the bathroom with friends, get up and sleep together, and write and draw on the shared computer.

It lies in grasping every stage of intimacy: returning the first wink. It's an amazing coincidence to really spend time getting to know those people, just like people on a first date, and find that they have a lot in common: "You don't like Fogartgrass? Me too! Let's get married! "

It lies in the courage to face the periodic sense of vulnerability. Is to stick to it after the crisis, even if you are not sure whether you still believe in this relationship, this career, this institution. It is to forgive your betrayal and ask for forgiveness when you failed your friends, made mistakes at work or broke your spouse's heart. When you establish close ties with your spouse, friends, career, community or belief, you are like Leon Vesti, "willing to be truly understood by others, even though the road ahead is full of dangers." Therefore, people need to learn to establish close relationships and understand how to get along. People need to learn to build close relationships, depend on each other and realize that life is really interesting-a couple should be the embodiment of love, you and your career should be integrated, and you should fully devote yourself to the philosophy or God you believe in.

What I'm talking about here is the art of emotion. We don't know each other naturally, and we need to go through fragile, persistent and human experiences repeatedly before we can master them.

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When I was studying at the University of Chicago, as students, we were generally not very good at establishing intimate relationships. We are very good at avoiding, especially those situations where our hearts belong or are coming. In our early twenties, we are busy showing off, and naturally we don't want to show our mediocrity, but this is an absolute prerequisite for establishing intimate relationships.

When I left the University of Chicago, my reading ability far exceeded reading.

My eyes can't see the beauty in kind and sincere people, because I didn't think they had much ideological depth at that time. I don't know how to deal with deep but daunting intimacy.

I hope I'm better now. At that time, there was my teaching guidance under the stage.

As we grow up, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to prove how smart we are in life. But there are countless occasions in life that need kindness, kindness, elegance, sensitivity, sympathy, generosity and love. Life needs you to broaden all the tracks of your emotions, you need to deal with others directly, and you need to take an intimate relationship class for one semester. If you haven't mastered it, I hope you can start preparing now.

Finally, I still have a hope, 20 17. You will graduate tomorrow, which is certainly gratifying. But before tomorrow comes, I hope you can do something icing on the cake tonight. Go to the library with people who are important to you. Nietzsche's tragic death was found deep in the pile of books. But don't open it.

? Take off some clothes to welcome a wonderful time.

Thank you. God bless you.