

Jeff Bezos to Princeton's class of 2010 :"We are What We Choose" - yarapavan
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/52/51O99/index.xml

======
Arun2009
> 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.

I keep coming across this theme again and again. "One day you will tell your
grandchildren..", "When you're lying in your deathbed..", etc. As if the
younger human has an obligation to work to create the perfect set of memories
for the older one, which then would be enjoyed for at best a few years. Toil
for 50 years of your life to create the perfect last 2 years!

It's perverse, really. We seem to enjoy imagining ourselves enjoying the
memories of our present lives..

~~~
zaidf
I smiled when I came across that line because I frequently use it--even down
to the 80-year old number.

It helps put things in perspective, especially with respect to fear. We fear
so many things and not do it. And yet, a lot of the fear is just imaginary--
something the 80 year old you can see looking back but the current you cannot.

So I ask myself "what would the 80 year old me think of it?" and if it says to
do it, I try to do it.

Example: you want to take a temporary crappy job to get back to your feet but
you're afraid friends will see you working there and lose respect.

Present me: afraid I'll lose my friends, ego hit

80-year old me: proud I followed my dream!

Now I totally understand if this doesn't work for you and don't expect it to
work for everyone or even most people. But I just thought I'd provide some
background on how people who do use this to motivate themselves are using it.

------
jacquesm
Jeff Bezos seems to suffer from selection bias. We don't always have those
choices, count yourself lucky if you do and then make the right ones but don't
fret about it if you do not.

Not all of us will become billionaires by simply making 'the right choices',
plenty of people made the choices the right way and ended up average or dirt
poor.

Count your wealth in the number of smiles you see when people meet you again
after not seeing you for a while.

~~~
kylemathews
Huh? Everyone has to make the choice between being clever or kind. The point
of the talk wasn't "make the right choices and you'll end up a billionaire."
The point of the story was the quality of your life, your own happiness, and
your real worth is determined by the choices you make, not what gifts you have
because, as Jeff pointed out, they're just gifts after all, you didn't earn
them.

His implicit point was an average intelligent person with average wealth can
be just as satisfied with his/her life as a highly intelligent, highly gifted
billionaire provided they both made quality choices about how they lived their
life.

Edit: clarified last sentence.

~~~
jacquesm
That's easy to say when you have a few billion in the bank. But most people
simply don't have the liberty of choice at all, their lives are driven by
requirements, not by freedom of choice.

Freedom of choice is for the most part an illusion, it is only true freedom if
you determine what's on the menu. To be able to choose 'left' or 'right' when
you want 'straight', 'down', 'reverse' and so on as valid choices but you
don't have them because of the constraints placed on you by every day life is
a false kind of freedom presented in those limited choices.

So, in practice, your average billionaire has more (many more) choices
available to him than those lower on the financial ladder. The reason Jeff
Bezos had the choice to give that speech or not is not because he's
particularly happy, but because he's rich.

~~~
kylemathews
Many less choices doesn't mean no choices.

I lived and worked for two years in the Philippines amongst some of the
poorest people in the world. These people were constrained in many ways as you
describe in job choices, educational attainments, opportunity for travel etc.
But regardless of how poor they were they still had the choice of to be kind
or clever, to forgive or seek revenge, to pursue worthwhile activities or
fritter away their time/money on drugs and alcohol, etc. There were many many
very happy people I met in the worst of slums.

The most important choices we make in little have absolutely zero to do with
how much money we have.

For a more extended essay on the topic, read "Man's Search for Meaning" by
Viktor Frankl who survived a Nazi concentration camp.

To pull one quote off its Wikipedia page: "Fundamentally, therefore, any man
can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally
and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration
camp."

~~~
jacquesm
> He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

A key insight in ethics is that truly ethical decisions almost always go
against the person making the decision.

A situation such as a concentration camp brings out the worst in some and the
best in others in very stark contrast because of the environment, not because
of the people in it. In less polarizing circumstances those on opposite ends
of the spectrum might very well get along just fine.

A couple of movies and books bring that out really well, 'Der Faelscher' for
instance, and the diary portion of the Odessa file as well as plenty of first
hand accounts, such as the one you reference but also many others. The scary
thing is that such an environment will also bring out the worst in otherwise
decent people, and that our society in some ways does the same thing to its
inhabitants, even if not on such a drastic scale.

~~~
dgordon
>A key insight in ethics is that truly ethical decisions almost always go
against the person making the decision.

What? Which theory of ethics are you using? I don't agree with this at all.

------
yarapavan
From the article:

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?

~~~
ostso
That seems like a fairly cliché series of dichotomies. Life isn't black and
white; if choices were always this clear-cut then they wouldn't be hard.

~~~
yewweitan
Agreed. But motivation seems to be pretty black and white (you're either
making it happen or not), at least in the short term, and cliches (or rather,
heuristics) are the best way to keep the motivation revving.

------
Artifex
Video of the speech (starts at 5:45 roughly):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmavNoChZc>

~~~
ptm
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmavNoChZc#t=6m15s>

------
ju2tin
Nowhere near as good as Steve Jobs' address at Stanford a few years back,
which remains the gold standard for these things.

This one seemed mainly like Jeff congratulating himself on the neat things
he's done, with very few actionable take-aways for the audience. The ending in
particular, with its repetitive "Will you A, or will you B" device, smacked of
laziness, as if it were hastily dashed off the night before.

~~~
hugh3
Most graduation speeches are fairly formulaic; regurgitations of the same few
bits of inspirational wisdom that we all already know (but can occasionally
afford to be reminded of, in the appropriate setting). Even the speeches which
acknowledge and play with the formula are still pretty formulaic.

The Steve Jobs version of the speech wasn't really any better than the Jeff
Bezos version, and neither of those is any better than the version given by
some guy you've never heard of at some fifth-rate school in the middle of
nowhere.

~~~
zackattack
I thought David Foster Wallace's speech was exceptional.

[http://publicnoises.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-foster-
wallac...](http://publicnoises.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-foster-wallace-
kenyon.html)

~~~
benatkin
That was fun to read. Afterward I looked for another commencement speech, and
read Bill Gates' speech at Harvard. It's interesting to compare and contrast
them.

> There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing
> things, because everyone knew I didn't worry about getting up in the
> morning.

[http://humanity.org/voices/commencements/speeches/index.php?...](http://humanity.org/voices/commencements/speeches/index.php?page=gates_at_harvard)

------
grasshoper
The boss he's talking about is David E. Shaw.

------
arthurdent
_"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."_

This really speaks to me. For a long time it was just a really obvious
overrepeated cliche to me. Then recently I've been going through a rough patch
with my startup, and hearing/reading it from other people has become critical
to my motivation to keep going forward.

With stability, money in the bank, and a dream, it was easy to say "I'll be
happy even if i try and fail, but i don't want to live with not trying;
wondering will eat me up."

All of the sudden, trying and failing, it became really hard to see how
failure was a better path. Hearing other people say it reminds me of why I
wanted to take the risk.

------
nickelplate
This hit me pretty hard.

~~~
drguildo
Me too. My gag reflex, mainly.

------
jgrahamc
I would choose to be a mensch. That's what I keep striving for.

~~~
Tichy
What's that?

~~~
jgrahamc
It's a Yiddish word that I picked up when living in the US (and working/living
around many American Jews). It roughly means "an honorable person" and I've
heard it used as an honorific term to describe another person (as in, "he's a
mensch").

MW says: "a person of integrity and honor". It's my desire that people might
view me as a mensch one day.

~~~
c1sc0
I know enough German for the idea of Jewish people talking about Mensch vs.
Unmensch to make me feel uncomfortable; probably because while I _do_
understand the language, I still lack the cultural references. Anyone care to
enlighten me? I read the wikipedia entry, but that somehow isn't enough. I'd
love to hear from people using this word in everyday life.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Uncomfortable, how? I'm not a German speaker, but my idiolect contains a fair
amount of Yiddish, and "mensch" is a word I use often enough.

As much as I am surprised to say it, the Wikipedia article is actually pretty
good.

Here's an example from real life, of someone calling Roger Federer a mensch:
[http://www.sporttaco.com/rec.sport.tennis/Federer_still_one_...](http://www.sporttaco.com/rec.sport.tennis/Federer_still_one_to_beat_3895.html)

Here's a reference to Tom Valenti as a mensch:
[http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/09/tom-valenti-is-a-
mensch-s...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/09/tom-valenti-is-a-mensch-
standup-guy.html)

And here's one about Bill Murray:
<http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1204-DEC_MURRAY_rev_>

This latter one is instructive, as it contrasts Bill Murray with Mickey
Rourke, who the author refers to as a douchebag.

And, perhaps this is as good a way as any to understand the usage of "mensch":
consider it the antonym to douchebag.

You know how there are some people that make you almost instinctively say to
yourself, _"Man, he's a real douche!"_? On the flip side, there are people of
whom you'll say _"What a mensch!"_

Does that help?

 _EDIT: fixed language_

------
kadavy
IMHO, pales in comparison to the address of his Steveness:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA>

