Transcending Yourself and Challenging Your Limits
演讲人：Anderson Cooper 安德森·库珀
Seriously，it is pleasure to be here on what is a remarkable day.It"s a beautiful day if it doesn"t rain and a very special day in your lives.You"ve worked incredibly hard to get here，to get through here，and I hope you"re all very proud of yourselves.You should be.And I"m sure you"ve already done this，but I hope that at some point this weekend-I"m sure everybody"s encouraged you to do this-that you look your parents in the eye and hung them close and thank them for everything they have done to get you to this moment and this spot.Because as hard as it"s been for you，I guarantee you it"s been twice as hard for them.
My mom"s advice to me as Yale graduation was "Follow your bliss".I was hoping for something a little more specific，like plastics.What，plastics？You like plastics？All right.But in retrospect，follow your blisswas pretty good advice.My mom didn"t actually coin the phrase-actually it was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College named Joseph Campbell who did-and my mom had seen a taped interview on TV.It shows you our relationship-she was giving advice she has gotten off of television.I"m thankful she wasn"t watching Montel Williams or something，or Fox News.I kid，because they have huge ratings.They kill me.
The problem，of course，with follow your bliss （and I actually think that"s pretty good advice），but the problem with follow your bliss is actually trying to figure out what your bliss is，and that"s not an easy thing to do.Like many of you，I have a liberal arts degree，which is to say，I have no actual skill.And I majored in political science.You"re excited about it now，but believe me，it doesn"t go very far.It means you can read a newspaper，but other than that，I"m not really sure what else.I also focused a lot of my studies on communism，which when the Berlin Wall fell，I was totally screwed.I know，it was a happy occasion for a lot of people，but believe me，on this campus，believe me，all of the Russian studies majors were very down in the dumps.The one thing I knew I liked was television and particularly television news.I watched a lot of it growing up so I figured okay，I"ve got a Yale degree，I"ll go give that a shot，I"ll apply for an entry-level job at ABC News，a gopher position.Like I"m totally qualified for this：answering phones，I"ll go do whatever Peter Jennings wants.I could not get this job.It took six months；they strung me along.I did interviews.Icould not get the job，which shows you the value of a Yale education.
But it actually was the best thing that ever happened to me.I decided that if no one would give me a chance，I"d have to take a chance，and if no one would give me an opportunity，I would have to create my own opportunity.So I came up with this plan to become a reporter.I figured if I went places where there weren"t many Americans，I wouldn"t have much competition.So I decided to start going to wars，which my mom was thrilled about.It was a very simple plan，but it was moronic，but it actually worked.I made a fake press pass on a Macintosh computer-actually，I didn"t even make it to be honest，a friend of mine made it because I"m computer illiterate-and I got a home video camera that I borrowed and I just decided to go to wars.I snuck into Burma and holed up with some students fighting the Burmese government and moved into Somalia in the early days of the famine.I spent really the next two years going from one war-torn country to another：Bosnia，South Africa for Mandela"s election.I was in Rwanda for genocide，which makes ultimately doing"The Mole"a natural step，as you can see where I"m going.
I may have gone to school as Yale，but I always think that in many ways I was educated on the streets of Johannesburg，in Kigali，in Sarajevo，in Port-Au-Prince.And I"ve learned when you go to the edges of the world，where the boundaries aren"t clear，where the darkparts of the human heart are open for all to see，you learn things about yourself andyou learn things about your fellow human beings and what we"re all capable of.We"re capable，really，of anything，great acts of compassion and dignity，as we saw in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.We"re also capable of great acts of cowardice and brutality and stupidity，which we also saw inthe wake of Hurricane of Katrina.
The funny thing is that just two years after doing this，of going on my own and going into wars，ABC News called me up and offered me a job as a correspondent.I was just about 27；I was the youngest correspondent they hired since Jennings and Koppel years ago.For me，it was a lesson：two years before I tried to get an entry-level job and I thought that was the path，because that was the path that everyone took.And had I gotten that job there was no way I would have had the opportunities that I had；there was no way I would have seen the things I"ve been able to see.
When I was graduating and trying to decide what to do with my life，I really felt paralyzed because I thought I had to figure it out all it once.I had to pick a career and start down a path that I"d be on for the rest of my life.I now know that it totally doesn"t work that way.It certainly didn"t for me.Everyone I know who"s successful，professionally and personally，could never have predicted when they graduated from college where they"d actually end up.My friends from Yale who are happiest are the ones who thought less of where they"d be in 10years and what steps they"d have to do now in order to make partner 10years from now in a law firm or build their 401K.My friends who are happiest now are the ones who kept taking steps based on what they feltright and what felt like them at the moment.If I had gotten that job on the set of ABC News there"s no telling where I"d be now.