ladies and gentlemen, i can say i'm no less nervous than my fellow and he was on the first time coming before this house. i can say ladies and gentlemen, that the problem we are facing before us, the problem that i have to deal with today, is how to define success.
it is often too easy, it is often too simplistic to define success as something external, something objective, something dealing with money, fame or reputation. but what i believe success is that it is not external. it comes from within. it is internal. i believe success is that you have to have your own ideals, and that you have faith in those ideals, even in the face of extreme adversity. and that is my definition of success.
i also believe that success is not discriminatory. success does not attach to a mere particular class of individuals. i believe that each and every individual, regardless of race, gender, class or even economic background, has an equal right to success, because each person has the right to develop his own ideals and to pursue those ideals.
a good example of this is the composer beethoven, a man who all of us know has created great symphonies. this man was deaf. this man was unable to hear his own majestic pieces of work. and yet, he held to his ideal of creation of music to the very end. then what exactly does the definition of success mean to me? to answer this question, to exemplify it, i pose a question to this house. i pose a question what brings us here together today, ladies and gentlemen, students and educators as you like. and the answer that i have found is the love for the spoken word.
love for the spoken word means how it is to express, how it is to listen, how it is to understand. because what happens when you have a pause, what happens when you have a rhetoric speech all differs on the impact and communication that you have on your audience. but the meaning of the spoken word applies ever more strongly to those who are unable to speak, or are unwilling to speak. because all the beautiful thoughts and emotions encapsulated in that person will inevitably be lost, if that person is not able to speak.
i once went to australia in 1998,and i saw two pictures drawn by three-year-old children. one was drawn by a normal child, one was drawn by what is known as an autistic child, a child which is exclusive, which is unable to express himself verbally to other people. and you could see the difference between the pictures. one was a picture of a horse very simple and straightforward. one was a picture of a horse a gain, but you could see the life, you could see the spirit, and you could see the detail behind that picture.
so the point i want to make here is that these people do have emotion they understand a lot, but it is very very fatal that they are not able to express themselves. and my definition of success is to share with them the beauty of the spoken word. my definition of success is to teach and be able to change these people's lives, because i have had the opportunity of encountering these people in my times either at school or during my summer jobs. i have had the time and opportunity to change these people. i have had the time to see exactly what exactly they go d1rough and to understand that point.
my ideal here is to share the beauty of the spoken word to these people. it is fright fatal that these people are not given the opportunity to be understood by the world. i say it because these people are often neglected by the public. i say it because people often think they are awkward and different. but i say we cannot forgive these acts because we must have a proactive approach to teach these people.
i say, ladies and gentlemen, that is important to keep your ideals. i say we should not have a premature abortion of ideals. it is easy to stray; it is easy to be distracted. what i say is let your ideals live on. let the child of your ideals live on, because what i want to leave you with is living you life without an ideal means that your life is not worth living at all. thank you.
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容