"Actually, I have been thinking about what I should tell you today. It is a bit ridiculous to let an old man who has never been to college tell the world's best college graduates about life experience. Although I seem to have achieved some success. But before I was sixty, I was always an old man who was so ordinary that he would not be looked at or even despised by others when walking on the street."

Qiao Zhiguo said humorously, and this sentence attracted a burst of laughter and humorous language made everyone interested and everyone listened seriously.

"I keep asking myself back these days. What have I learned over the years? What can I share with you? I guess any of you will not be interested in my life experience before I was 60 years old, and I am not willing to live like me. So today, I will simply share what I learned in the past two years?"

Qiao Zhiguo smiled slightly, and everyone laughed. Many people know about Qiao Zhiguo’s life before he was 60 years old. In the eyes of these college students, that kind of ordinary life is a failed life.

However, Qiao Zhiguo's life in the past two years after retirement has been counterattacked.

"I want to share a story about death today. When I was sixty, I read a sentence: If you regard every day as the last day of your life, then one day you will find that you are right. This sentence left a deep impression on me. Since then, in the past two years, I have asked myself in the mirror every morning: If today is the last day of my life, what do you want to do? Will you accomplish what you want to do today? When the answer is given many times in a row, I know that I need to change something."

Qiao Zhiguo looked at the students below, and the students also looked at Qiao Zhiguo, listening very seriously.

"About a year ago, when I had just retired, I suddenly had a whim and went to the hospital for a full physical examination. The results of the physical examination showed that there might be a tumor in my pancreas. I didn't know what the pancreas was. The doctor told me that it was probably an incurable cancer. If the diagnosis was confirmed, I still had three to six months to live in this world."

When Qiao Zhiguo said this, everyone at the scene widened their eyes, including Cao Lu and others next to him.

"That was the closest moment I was to death, and I hope it was the closest one in the next few decades. To further confirm that I went to a better hospital, the end result was not pancreatic cancer, and I came back from the brink of death. After this, I can tell you more certainly that no one wants to die, even if people want to go to heaven, people will not die to go there. But death is the common end point for each of us. No one can escape it. It should be the same. Because death is the best invention in life. It clears the old so that the new can be made way for the new. You are new now, but from now on, you will gradually become the old and then be cleared. I'm sorry that this is dramatic, but it's very real."

Qiao Zhiguo looked at everyone with a smile on his face. But these words made many people feel heavy all of a sudden.

"So, I want to say to you today: Your time is limited, so don't waste time living as someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogmatism. Dogmatism is a person who lives only in the result of other people's thinking. Don't let other people's opinions drown out your inner voice. Have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition. You should ask yourself, what kind of person do you really want to be? Other things are secondary."

"You have just graduated from college and are still young. You should be fearless about this world. I can start over at the age of sixty, so what are you afraid of?"

Qiao Zhiguo's rhetoric made everyone laugh.

Yes, Qiao Zhiguo can start over even when he is 60 years old, and he is only in his twenties, so what should I be afraid of?

"Teacher Qiao is starting to give these Americans chicken soup again."

Cao Lu couldn't help but whisper next to her, and Liang Chao and Wu Yang couldn't help laughing after hearing this.

"Finally, I want to discuss with you the meaning of failure. At your age, perhaps the most feared thing is not poverty, but failure. You are young, talented, well-educated, and never encountered difficulties or heartbreaking moments. The fact that you are graduates of Columbia University means that you do not know much about failure. You may be extremely eager for success, so you are very afraid of failure. To be honest, failure in your eyes is likely to be success in the eyes of ordinary people, after all, you have reached a very high level in your studies."

After Qiao Zhiguo finished speaking, everyone began to ponder.

This is true. Students who can graduate from this university have already been very successful in some ways.

"Ultimately, we all have to decide what counts as failure, and if you want, the world is quite eager to give you a set of standards. So I think it's fair to say that from any traditional standards, my failure reached an epic unprecedented scale in the days before I was sixty. The orphan childhood didn't give me a good education, and the short-lived marriage made me a tough single father. Apart from the tramp, I was probably one of the poorest people and really had nothing. By usual standards, I was also the most failed person I knew."

Qiao Zhiguo's words made many people who knew Qiao Zhiguo's story feel distressed. Qiao Zhiguo before he was 60 years old was definitely a failure that made people feel distressed. But now, Qiao Zhiguo is a different person.

"Now, I don't plan to stand here to tell you that failure is fun. Those days were the dark years in my life. I don't know if it represents the hardships that need to be experienced in fairy tales, and I don't know how long I have to walk in the darkness. For a long time, all I left in front of me was hope, not reality."

Qiao Zhiguo couldn't help but sigh, and the people below listened carefully. The high-definition camera pointed at Qiao Zhiguo and recorded all of Qiao Zhiguo's speeches.

"So why should I talk about the benefits of failure? Because failure means stripping away unnecessary things. Therefore, I no longer pretend to be myself and stay away from myself. Instead, I start to focus all my energy on things that interest me. If I hadn't been successful in other fields, I might not have tried more and found more stages of my own. I gained freedom because I was still alive even though the fear of the most has happened."

Qiao Zhiguo smiled and said, warm applause came from below. Now Qiao Zhiguo found his own stage after countless failures in his life. He has achieved great success in these fields.

"You may never reach the level of failure I experienced, but some failures are inevitable in life. Life cannot be without a little failure unless you are careful in life, and that also means you are not really living. No matter what, some failures are still doomed to happen. Failure makes me feel a sense of security in my heart, which is something I have not obtained from the exam. Failure makes me see myself clearly, which is something I cannot understand through other methods. I found that I have stronger will and determination than I think."

"Getting wisdom from setbacks and becoming strong means that you are more capable of surviving than ever before. Only when adversity comes will you truly know yourself and the people around you. This understanding is real wealth, and although it is exchanged for pain, it is more useful than any qualification certificate you get."

"If I were given a time machine, I would tell myself before that human happiness lies in knowing that life is not a beautiful transcript. Your qualifications and resume are not your life. Although you will encounter many people who are the same age or older as me, they are still confused today. Life is difficult, complex, and beyond anyone's control ability, and understanding this humbly will enable you to survive better after experiencing vicissitudes."

"You are eager to learn and humble. This is a sentence I want to give to you, and I also hope that I can do this. You are about to graduate and start a new life. You must leave your parents' care and truly go through your own life."

After Qiao Zhiguo finished speaking, there was warm applause from the scene. It was wonderful, and this speech was indeed very exciting.

"If I drink this sip of toxic chicken soup"

After hearing this, Cao Lu couldn't help laughing. Cao Lu knew the best about what Qiao Zhiguo looked like.

Usually, Cao Lu would sometimes read some poisonous chicken soup, but every time Qiao Zhiguo saw it, he would make a few words without hesitation. Today, Qiao Zhiguo is here, but he has given the children of Columbia University a lot of poisonous chicken soup.

Cao Lu didn't feel disgusted with this at all.

For these Americans, you should be given more poisonous chicken soup. How can you know the hardships of life without experiencing some setbacks in life?

"Finally, I want to say a few words to all parents. Children's lives should not be in a regular and regular basis. For these children, don't use your ideas to control and restrain them. They are already the best college graduates and adults. They should have the ability to plan their own lives, even if they choose to be ordinary."

Qiao Zhiguo's words made the students below lit up their eyes. Identity, absolute recognition, and they also hate their parents' involvement in their own affairs.
Chapter completed!