Follow Your Heart, Dare to Fail, Stay Wise and Forever Young!
(追随我心，勇面失败，坚守明智，永葆赤忱)
Vincent Chang
July 5, 2013
 

Last year, at this occasion, I spoke to the graduating class under the topic, “I do not wish you smooth sailing (我不祝你一帆风顺)”. This year, however, I will be more explicit.  I’d like to wish you something and share with you some of my principles.

I am going to share with you three principles that I believe in.

#1: Follow your heart, do what you like, and then you may be able to change the world.

I have a test that may help determine whether you like what you do--every morning when the alarm clock goes off, ask yourself whether you’re looking forward to today’s work or you’d rather call in sick and take today off?

If you are looking forward to it, then congratulations, you like what you do.  If you‘d rather call in sick and take the day off, then what should you do? Look for another job!

But how to get to do what you like and like what you do?  First, follow your heart. Note your heart, not your brain. So no regression analysis is needed. Also note your heart, not your classmates’, your girlfriend’s, your boyfriend’s, or your parents’. And second, dare to be different and do differently.  I know it’s not easy.  But I know some people who have done so.

I know Ang Lee (李安) did.
His heart was with the movie. Every morning when he woke up he was thinking of nothing but movie and he didn’t compromise himself for other jobs.  He lived on without a job for five years. Eventually he won the Oscar’s Best Director Award, twice.

I know Bill Gates did.
He loved computer.  He might have been considered a nerd. He dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft. Those who might have teased him may now work for him at Microsoft.

I know Luo Dayou (罗大佑) did.
He loved music more than anything else. He was a medical doctor first before he decided to dedicate all his time to something he liked: music. I believe he was a better musician than he was a doctor.  He became a famous composer and singer of my generation and was praised as the godfather of modern Taiwan pop songs.

They are each successful in their own ways.  But one thing in common is that (a) they all followed their heart, and (b) they all dared to do something different, something that was not very accepted by the society at that time--Ang Lee being jobless five years, Bill Gates dropping out of college, and Luo Dayou giving up his medical doctor career.

And yet, the world has become a more interesting place, because of them.  So in this sense, they have changed the world. They have changed the world by following their own heart and daring to be different and do differently. 

As for me, after a somewhat envied career in the Silicon Valley for several years, I faced a decision whether (a) to continue to do it for the next 30 years and retire--I know I’d likely live a comfortable life then; or (b) to quit my Silicon Valley job, and follow my heart to pursue something I had always looked forward to.

Then I ask myself a question: if I don’t pursue what I like now, will I regret it 30 years later?

So I made perhaps one of the most important decisions in my life. None of my friends had supported my decision. My parents had been reluctant to talk about their son. In the end, I decided to follow my heart.

I believe in what’s in a poem that the famous poet Li Bai (李白) wrote in the 8th century: “Everyone was born to be of special, unique purpose (天生我材必有用),” which is today’s version of a Lady Gaga’s song: “Born this way.” So true, we were all born this way.  None of us can be someone else.  So only being yourself and following your own heart can you have your comparative advantage, and only then may you be able to change the world.

So my principle #1: Follow your heart, do what you like, and you may be able to change the world.

#2:  Embrace mistakes, failures and losses, and make them your friends and teachers.

Why?  Because no one has a life of smooth journey. The journey to success will inadvertently run through mistakes, failures, losses, and defeats.   And this is almost the law of life.

So what should we do?

The good news is that mistakes, failures and defeats are our great teachers.  As a baseball coach once said and I agree, “In winning, we learn a little; in losing, we learn everything.”

So if we cannot avoid mistakes and failures, why not embrace them, make them our friends, our teachers? I know some people did.

I know Michael Bloomberg did.
He was fired from a main Wall Street firm.  Then he started his own business. I believe many of you have frequent contact with the computer terminals that bear his name. He has donated in total more than US$1.1 billion to his alma mater Johns Hopkins University.  US$1.1 billion is equal to nearly 7 billion RMB, which is 1 billion RMB more than the total budget of the entire Peking University in 2013. He is the current mayor of New York.

I know Steve Jobs did.
We are all familiar with Steve Jobs’ story. He was fired by Apple, the company he founded, and then came back to Apple to become one of the most innovative entrepreneurs of our time.

I know J.K .Rowling did.
She came out of divorce and bankruptcy to write the most popular novels in the past decade.

I know Milton Hersey did.
He was bankrupted twice, almost three times.  But he learned from his past mistakes.  He was the founder of now the most popular chocolate brand in the world, the Hersey Chocolate Company.

I also know a basketball player did.
He said and I quote: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career.  I’ve lost almost 300 games.  Twenty six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.  I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeeded.”  That’s Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player in the history.

And I also know a person.
One day one of his colleagues asked him, “You career seems very smooth…” He replied, “Well, you should know, I have been rejected perhaps more than a thousand times.”  That person is me.  If you know me well, I am a person of no good luck at all. 

So my principle #2: Embrace mistakes and failures and turn them into your friends and teachers.

#3: Read a lot, travel a lot and experience a lot, so you may connect the dots and stay wise and young.

Perhaps I can use some brain science here. Our brain has 100 billion neural cells. How big is 100 billion? If your fulltime job is to count the number of neural cells in a person’s brain.  Suppose you count one cell per second, and work eight hours a day and 250 days a year. Then how long can you finish the counting?  It would take 14,000 years, or three times as long as Chinese civilization of 4,600 years.

That’s how long it would take.  That’s how big we are.  The whole thing is a big universe.  You and I, as individuals, are each a small universe. If we, as individuals, are defined as the connections of our neurons in our brain (if we use them, they connect, and if we don’t use them, they disconnect), then we can have virtually infinite many possibilities.

I believe that the more you read, travel and experience, the more connections there will be in your brain and the more you are able to explore the infinite many possibilities you may become, and as a result, making you wise or wiser. In addition, the new connections may be able to keep replacing the dead cells and make you young or stay young in your mind.

Let me share a conversation between my daughter and me. On my 50th birthday, my daughter said to me: “Dad, I have good news and bad news. Bad news is you are 50 years old. Good news is I am not. Ha ha ha.” “You’re right. But to me, this is the 21st anniversary of my 29th birthday,” I answered her tease. So on my birthday this year, she sent me a birthday card reading: “Happy 29th birthday, Dad.”

Age is a state of mind, not of body.  I hope to our gentlemen here, in your mind, you’ll be forever 29. And to all you ladies, in your mind, you’ll be forever 21.

So my principle #3: Read a lot, travel a lot, experience a lot, so you may connect the dots and stay wise and young.

So these have been my three principles or my advices to you if you think they are helpful.

What if after you have done all the above-- after you have done what you like,  after you have learned from your failures and after you have connected all of your dots--you still feel something missing, unfulfilling, or unsuccessful?

What happened? Life happened!

Life is full of uncertainties.  Many people complain that life is unfair.  Let me declare here: Life is not fair, it has never been fair, and it will never ever be fair. 

So what would you do?  Accept it! And then, whether you are successful or not, write down your own stories. Write the stories that are true.

I am going to end my speech with a proverb that I learned during my recent trip to Berlin. I have mentioned about it in various occasions lately. It says, “In life we always meet twice, always.” This statement is a belief, and also a commitment.

To our graduating students, this past three years at PHBS is our 1st rendezvous. I am not sure whether we’ll meet the second time as the German proverb predicts.  But I am sure that if you and I are destined, we may meet more than twice.  I hope then, it’d be your turn to tell me your stories, the stories that are true.

So until then, follow your heart, do what you like, dare to fail, stay wise and forever young!

Thank you and Godspeed.