书城外语在哈佛听演讲
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第38章 我们共同的人性价值更重要(3)

After George Bush and I did the tsunami,we got so into this disaster work that Kofi Annan asked him to oversee the UN"s efforts in Pakistan after the earthquake,which you acknowledged today,and asked me to stay on as the tsunami coordinator for two years.So on my next to last trip to Aceh in Indonesia,the by far the hardest hit place,a quarter of a million people killed.I went to one of these refugee camps where in the sweltering heat,several thousand people were still living in tents.Highly uncomfortable.And my job was to go there and basically listen to them complain and figure out what to do about it,and how to get them out of there more quickly.So every one of these camps elected a camp leader and when I appeared,I was introduced to my young interpreter,a young Indonesian woman,and to the guy who was the camp leader,and his wife and his son.And they smiled,said hello,and then I looked down at this little boy,and I literally could not breathe.I think he"s the most beautiful child I ever saw.And I said to my young interpreter,I said,I believe that"s the most beautiful boy I ever saw in my life.She said,yes,he"s very beautiful and before the tsunami he had nine brothers and sisters.And now they"re all gone.

So the wife and the sonexcused themselves.And the father who had lost his nine children proceeded to take me on a two-hour tour of this camp.He had a smile on his face.He never talked about a ny t h in g but what t he p e ople in t hat camp needed.He gave no hint of what had happened to him and the grief that he bore.We get to the end of the tour.It"s the health clinic in the camp.I lookup and there is his wife,a mother who had lost nine of her ten children,holding a little bitty baby less than a week old,the newest born baby in the camp.And she told me,I"m going to get in trouble for telling this.She told me that in Indonesian culture,when a woman has a baby,she gets to go to bed for 40days and everyone waits on her hand and foot.She doesn"t get up,nothing happens.And then on the 40th day,the mother gets up out of bed,goes back to work doing her life and they name the baby.So this child was less than a week old.So this mother who had lost her nine children is here holding this baby.And she says to me,this is our newest born baby.And we want you to name him.Little boy.

So I looked at her and I said through my interpreter,I said,do you have a name for new beginning?And she explained and the woman said something back and the interpreter said yes,luckily for you,in Indonesian the word for dawn is a boy"s name.And the mother just said to me,we will call this child Dawn and he will symbolize our new beginning.You shouldn"t have to meet people that lose nine of their ten children,cherish the one they got left,and name a newborn baby Dawn to realize that what we have in common is more important than what divides us.And I leave you with this thought.When Martin Luther King was invited here in 1968,the countr y wasstill awash in racism.The next decade it was awash in sexism,and a fter thatin homophobia.And occasionally those things rear their ugly head along the way,but by and large,nobody in this class is going to ca r r y t hose chains a round through life.

But nobody gets out for free,and everyone has temptations.The great temptation for all of you is to believe thatthe one-tenth of one percent of you which is different and which brought you here and which can bring you great riches or whatever else you want,is really the sum of who you are and that you deserve your good fate,and others deserve their bad one.That is the trap into which you must not fall.Warren Buffett"s just about to give away 99percent of his money because he said most of it he made because of where he was born and when he was born.It was a lucky accident.And his work was rewarded in this time and place more richly than the work of teachers and police officers and nurses and doctors and people who cared for those who deserve to be cared for.So he"s just going to give it away.And still with less than one percent left,have more than he could ever spend.Because he realizes that it wasn"t all due to the one-tenth of one percent,and that his common humanity requires him to give money to those for whom it will mean much more.

In the central highlands in Africa where I work,when people meet each other walking,nearly nobody rides,and people meet each other walking on the trails,and one person says hello,how are you,good morning,the answer is not I"m fine,how are you.The answer translated into English is this:I see you.Think of that.I see you.How many people do all of us pass every day that we never see?You know,we all haul outof here,somebody"s going to come in here and fold up 20-something thousand chairs.And clean off whatever mess weleave here.And get ready for tomorrow and then a fter tomor row,someone will have to fix that.Many of those people feel that no one ever sees them.I would never have seen the people in Aceh in Indonesia if a terrible misfortune had not struck.And so,I leave you with that thought.Be true to the tradition of the great people who have come here.Spend as much of your time and your heart and your spirit as you possibly can think about the 99.9percent.See everyone and realize that everyone needs new beginnings.Enjoy your good fortune.Enjoy your differences,but realize that our common humanity matters much,much more.God bless you and good luck.

参考译文(梁春阳译)

非常感谢萨曼莎、斯蒂芬妮、克里斯,以及所有的司法官和所有发言的学生。感谢你们的幽默和玩笑,你们知道,当我受邀来做演讲时,在某些方面我觉得有点惭愧。因为他们曾邀请比尔·盖茨在毕业典礼上演讲,他比我更有钱,而且曾就读于哈佛大学。我把我的朋友格伦·哈金丝斯也带来了,他参加了毕业30周年的聚会,并负责监督校友捐款。他解释说,盖茨真的非常有钱,而我是富有。那时我想,好吧,学生要求我去,那就去吧,反正也不用穿学士服。