ClAiRe

“ONE DAY, YOU WILL DISCOVER THAT IT IS HARDER TO BE KIND THAN CLEVER”

“We are What We Choose”

Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Class of 2010

Baccalaureate

May 30, 2010

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.

How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

The title speaks for itself. Otherwise, I am really sad right now.

It’s summer. I am going to Taiwan this summer.

Wonder what happened about the America camp business? Well, I got in. (yay for me.) But, I can’t go. Something happened. And my parents won’t let me go.

Ever heard of family emergency? Yeah. Family emergency = Going home.

I haven’t been outside of my home since Friday. And it’s been a week. Sad, huh?

But on Monday, I am going to have some fun. I am going to Happy Valley. Let’s hope it’s not too crowded there.

Hey, it’s my birthday on July third. Happy early birthday please?

Anyways. I have to go to bed now, I’ll write later. BYE!

It was yesterday.

Sixth grade ended. It makes me feel so sad.

It’s not just that sixth grade ended, but a lot of people I know are leaving.

It makes me so hurt because I know I will never see them again.

Yesterday, at the assembly, I saw a lot of people crying. Tears streaming down their faces as they embrace each other in tight hugs and mutter phrases like “I’ll miss you…”

And I watched as they sobbed and their faces went red and they hugged each other more, but for some reason, I wasn’t really part of them. I was really sad, I was so pathetically sad. My friends Hye Won, Julia, Rachel, KM, and Tiffany were leaving, and it made me feel like I was drowning in a pool of sorrow. But I watched. It was what I felt like. It felt like that I wasn’t part of the huddle, but watching from somewhere else. And occasionally, I would embrace my friends. It still felt like I was looking from above.

As I arrived at my bus, as I sat down at my seat, I was back in my body. And I realized, with remorse, that I should’ve done something better than that. I should have said something better to my friends leaving. Something comforting. I should’ve asked for their email or something. Ugh. I should’ve done better than to leave a friendship at that. D: And I wish I cried, because it will show how melancholy I am. But I don’t know how to cry… in front of other people.

Oh well…

Bye bye, sixth grade…

And hello, summer…

Yes, that’s right!!!

I can’t belive that sixth grade is almost over! I feel so sad… ish. But seriously, I can still remember myself as that nervous newbie in Mrs. Carozza’s classroom. And I anxiously glanced at all my classmates, thinking, “So… what about them?” HAHA. I gained so much; knowledge, friendship, and experience! To all sixth-graders-to-be: DON’T BE AFRAID! Enjoy sixth grade. It’s going to be awesome for you guys, because it was awesome for me! And I am so pessimistic, so yeah!

School ends in what, two weeks? I am a little bit… afraid? Ugh. Sometimes I wish time could just FREEZE and then I could just look around and then remember every detail of that unforgettable moment. Sketch it down, write about it, and think about it. Because every moment of life is important. Now I am scared of forgetting: of forgetting those stupid jokes we made up, of forgetting all the people, and of forgetting all the important lessons I learned from events.

Hey! Now I am being pessimistic again! Maybe I should just mention about all the good stuff or the different things now, and save all the tears and gloomy faces for the last day of school!

The nearest joyful thing is field day! I can’t wait! It’s going to be so epic like it was last year, and last last year! In case you don’t know, Field Day is a day when we just go outdoors and have fun. We are going to do carnival games, water slide ( or so I heard), and track and field. I am not that excited about the track and field part because I was never much of a jock in any sports except for badminton. :s But carnival games was so fun last year! But I am not sure what we are doing for the carnivals games this year because I don’t know how the MS Field Day goes. But I’ll learn more about it later!

Jackdaw Day! That’s June 10th? I am working with Morena on my Jackdaw. We are supposed to make a collection of things that represent China Alive. Morena and I went to Wild Wall for China Alive. It was epic, but we didn’t have any … erm… direct artifacts. Because we can’t just take a brick from the Great Wall and bring it back. So most of our artifacts were photos, and we’re good photographers, so ha!

Concert! That’s actually next Wednesday. I think I am not allowed to tell you what I am playing… or am I? I don’t know, but the dress code is super easy! Black, black, and black!

Hmm… a few weeks after all this, I will be in America, Chicago! YAY! (But I have to turn in some forms, which I haven’t done yet.) Summer camp much? I guess it’ll be pretty fun. I’ve never been to a really academic summer camp before! So this will be interesting…

Oh well, I am ill, even if I don’t sound like it. So I have to go to bed now! Bye!

Ehh… no. We just had our “Myg nyte cruise dance” on Friday. It was… fun?

I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s… well… it was interesting. I guess it was just a different experience, and maybe I can try to feel the hyperness of wearing a pretty dress.

For the dance, we HAD TO wear dresses. I heard that they don’t let you in if you don’t wear a dress. My friends really wanted me to go, so I went. Linnea and Seira helped me pick out this dress. Yes, it’s all pretty and all stylish and like… perfect, but then… when I wear it… BLARGH. Not beautiful at all. So, using my awesome logic, I wore this huge jacket over the whole dress, and just let out a tiny bit of the dress just to show other people I AM ACTUALLY WEARING A DRESS! Ha! All of my friends were gawking at me because they have never seen me wear a dress before. I told you it was an interesting experience.

Other girls looked pretty in their dresses! Really! And boys… they had to wear suits… which was… again, interesting. I don’t mean it in a bad way, it’s just a new sight. Boys usually wear like normal baggy t-shirts and baggy jeans or something. But a lot of the boys bought in suits on Friday; and the suits were on the clothes hanger thing with a thing to cover it. (I have really pathetic vocab.) Haha! I thought it was hilarious. (In a good way…?)

Oh well, enough about that dress code. We arrived there in buses, and I sat next to Vicky. We chatted and chatted and chatted and when we got bored of that I scrubbed off all my make-up. (I wore it so then my friends would wear it so then I could see them in make up!) We were near the HuangPu river as we approached a bridge. “OH MY GOD! We’re so close!” “Uh huh!” I look down at the murky green-black water. “Ew! It’s so polluted…” “Seriously, did you expect anything clean in Shanghai? Especially a river?” I sadly shake my head at Vicky. “Nah, I didn’t really expect anything clean. I was just… thinking that the color wouldn’t be so ugly.”

Then we boarded our cruise. The theme was “Holly Bolly Wood.” Again.. it’s a really interestingly decorated boat. The Indian theme is really colorful. They played Indian music, which basically went like, “YEE-YEE-YA-YA” and so on. We chilled around for a bit, explored the cruise just to see where everything is. And then there was a rock concert. The sixth grade band played “21 Guns” by Greenday. A person not in sixth grade sang “No Air” by I-don’t-know-the-singer’s-name.

Oh and I forgot to mention, our special guest from puxi was Cindy. I seriously have no idea how she managed to get into the cruise, but she was there! So a round of applause for her for being the only person from puxi to go to the pudong boat danec! Hooray.

Hmm… Other than that, we had dinner. It was… well… I didn’t eat a lot because I didn’t really feel like it. (Sorry about how lame my writing is now.) Okay a lot happened in between….

So, anyways, the “dance floor”, which was basically the deck of the cruise was set up. Everybody went there to dance. The music was pretty good, actually. People just hopped around for the fast songs. And they huddled in a circle. The music eventually got too loud for Manlin and I, so we went down to the balcony part. I don’t really know what it is, but it is this balcony-like place, it’s outside, and it’s on the second floor.

On the balcony, I just chilled with my friends. It was… interesting? It was misty on Friday, so you could see the tall buildings disappearing around in the middle. Everything seemed to be whiter. It was… ghastly. :O

I spent most of my time there. Just chatting and doing nothing with my friends. And also dancing and singing Hot n’ Cold to cheer my friend up. (I sucked.)

Blah blah blah… a lot happened, but I don’t feel like talkin about that just know. We were almost at the quay when I saw my compound, Yanlord Garden, on the other side of the river.

“LOOK, MANLIN! LOOK! OMG! THAT’S WHERE I LIVE! WOW! THEY SHOULD STOP AT THE OTHER SIDE SO I COULD JUST GET OFF AND GO HOME! WOW!”

So there I was, gasping. And my friend was just staring at me going hysterical about how they should go to my compound instead of here.

We took the bus home and I had to actually accompany my friend, Vicky, home, because she was too scared to go by herself! It was only 9 o’ clock, and it’s not like anyone is going to kidnap us… in our own compound! Anyways, after that, I went home. Went online…. and collapsed right next to my laptop.

Tomorrow is the first day of China Alive for us Pudong-ers. I am going to Beijing! Woohoo. I can’t wait, it’s going to be so co0l. Well, it’s not going to be exactly “cool” but maybe something really unforgettable.

I am already exhausted thinking about all the hiking at the Great Wall. :S I hope I make it through. And sadly, I won’t die. Such bad new for some of you, ehh? Anyways, I better go to bed soon, because I have to get up at 5 tomorrow.

On Friday, we were doing house sports. And we were supposed to carry someone to somewhere. The carrier tripped, and the person who was carried fell and … was injured pretty badly. I hope she gets better soon!

Also on Friday, our guest musicians, The Trio, performed a concert with Strings and Band. The Junior Band (points at me) performed a song called “Bad Attitude” with the trio. It was pretty jazzy and cool. ;D

I have to go now… BYE!

Today, in Humanities, we had a gathering of the gods. We each drew a slip of paper from a jar that has a name of an Egyptain god on it. I got Horus. And for the last week or so, we were assigned to dress up as that god and memorize information about that god; like symbols, a myth about the god, and responsibilities. Mrs. Carozza, my humanities instructor, said that this part is something like a cocktail party. You are suppose to talk a lot, and eat very little, or at least very casually, not gulping down oreos with coke.

Anyways, at the “cocktail party”, I gathered quite some information about other Egyptian gods and godesses. And here’s what I’ve come up with.

Shu: He is the god of air. His symbol is ostrich feathers. He seperated Geb from Nut.

Nut: She is the goddess of sky. Her symbols are the night sky, golden stars, and … cows. She married her twin brother, Geb. But was seperated by Shu. And everyday at night, she swallows/eats Re and gives birth to Re again in the morning.

Anubis: The god that weighs the heart with the feather. If the heart is too heavy with sins and crime, it’ll be eaten by Ammit. (Or is it Ammut?) Anyways, he has the head of a dog. And he has two moms and two dads.

Re: The god of creation, and of the sun. (And apparently I helped him navigate a boat.) Technically, he is the “father of all gods.” He has the head of a hawk/falcon. Everyday, while traveling through the sky, he has to battle three evil monsters. If he is defeated, then there is a storm. And at dawn, he is an infant. In the morning, he is a child. At noon, he is middle-aged. So he ages as the day passes by.

Ammit: She is better known as the “soul eating monster.” She has the head of a crocodile, front of a leopard, and back of a hippo. She eats hearts with heavy sins. And she told me that hearts taste really good.

Isis(my mom): She is the husband of Osiris, and the mom of Horus. (The Isis from the other class had me in her stomache. Because she was “pregnant” with me at that time.) After her husband was banished, she was mourned and gave birth to Horus. Nephthys (Isis’ sister) helped Isis restore the pieces of Osiris.

That is all I remember.

We built two different types of Mousetrap Cars in science for the last couple of… weeks. We ran trials on both of the cars; we timed, measured, and recorded the data. I made a graph for the data. (But since I do not have my data sheet with me, I had to use the sample data for this graph.)

And this is what my graph looks like:

The point of the graph is to compare the time of Limmo and Speedster. On the x axis it shows the trials. There’s trial 1, 2, 3, and 4. The red represents Limmo/Big Mama, and the blue represents Little Moe/Speedster. On the y axis, it is labeled time in seconds. The intervals go up in 1.5’s. The graph shows that Limmo traveled longer than Speedster for all of the trials by a lot. (I also labeled the exact time and distance in meters next to each bar.) The graph also shows that Limmo traveled longer.

(Thanks, Hyewon, for making Limmo!)

Name of god/goddess: Horus
God/Goddess of the sky
Responsibilities include: protecting the ruler or Egypt,
Symbols: Eye of Horus, hawk, falcon, bull, Double Crown, Winged Disk, Sphinx, weapons, iron, blacksmiths
Describe appearance: He has a head of a falcon/hawk. And he had a staff, too. His left eye was the moon and his right was the sun.
Related Mythology: After the god of confusion, Seth, killed Osiris (Horus’ father), Horus battled Seth for the throne of Egypt. In the battled, Horus lost one eye, but was restored later on. Then, the eye of Horus became the symbol for protection, strength, vigor, and self-sacrifice. Afterwards, Horus was throned the ruler of the living.
Get an image or picture:

The god of the sky, the guardian of Pharaoh... I present you... HORUS!

How I will dress up as my god/goddess: I will wear an eye mask. The left eye is the moon (just like Horus), and the right eye is the sun.  And then, I’ll go get a hiking stick and make that my staff. Since I am still not really sure what Horus wears, I am just going to wear something black and then a piece of string around me with a piece of garment-like clothing they wore in Ancient Egypt.

Complete the following and take notes in a post on your blog.
* Click on Mummification
a.    Click Story.

Oh no! A man has died… and we need to prepare him for the mummification.
b.    Click Embalming. List 5 steps of embalming.

1. In the tent of ibu, the embalmer washes the body with good smelling palm wine and water from the Nile.

2. The embalmer makes an incision on the left side of the body, and carefully take the organs out. They leave the heart in the body, because it is needed for the afterlife. The organs; lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines are washed and packed with natron (salt) for them to dry. A long hook is then stabbed up the roof of the nose and into the brain. The man stirs the brain until it is like a slushie, and then quickly withdraw it from the skull to pull out the pieces. (Another way is to make it like really really slushie-like, and then turn the body over, and the brain pours out through the nose.)

3. The body is buried and stuffed in salt for it to completely dry out. If fluid remains in the body, the body will decay.

4. After 40 days of drying it out, they wash it again with water. (I think it is waterproof at this stage.) The body is then covered in oil, to help it stay stretchy and elastic.

5. The internal organs are wrapped in linen and stuffed into the body again. Sawdust, linen, and leaves are stuffed into the body too to make it look lifelike. (It was rather skinny and dark after the salt.) Again, good-smelling oil is applied to the skin. (In the past, the internal organs were put into canopic jars. These jars had very unique lids, each symbolized an organ. Each organ has a god.)
c.    Click Wrapping. Under ritual, describe the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony

The Opening of the Mouth Ceremony is a ceremony that enables the deceased to travel for the afterlife. It lets the deceased eat and drink again, and do other things, too!

DATE DUE: Wednesday, May 5

Create an interesting title relating to your dream house.  2.5 points

Include a picture of your dream house.  2.5 points

My painting for the Dream House project in Art, as you can see, it is not really good, because I rushed it in the end.

Using at least 4 sentences, complete the following:

1.  Describe the dream house project. 5 points

First, we had to do a worksheet called “Exercise 2 – 1 Point Perspective” to learn about 1 point perspective and how to use it. And then, we made a sketch of our dream house in a 15cm.x15cm. box. We had to have a horizonal line and a vanishing point. We were suppose to come up with five unique features for the house, such as trampoline, swimming pool, etc. We colored the dream house in a monochromatic color scheme. Afterwards, we, using the sketch, made a bigger copy of the dream house onto a bigger piece of paper. We colored it in, just like for the sketch, and then colored the background too.

2.  What was the inspiration behind your dream house design? 5 points

The inspiration was something like a lot of windows with sunlight penetrating through. I like sunlight a lot and I want my house to be filled with sunlight so there’s a really happy glow about it. (Although it looks blue on the outside.) And also it’s supposed to look all liquidy and stuff. So it’s blue. (That’s kind of like the main idea of the dream house.)

3.  If you could build your dream house anywhere in world, where would you build it? Why? 5 points

I would like to build the dream house in America. Because it is a place where a lot of people I know are and that is somewhere where I can make new friends. And also America is not as polluted as China. If I have to choose exactly somewhere in America, then it would be the Town of Weston in Connecticut.