I love this place. Thank you all for coming out in the rain, the pouring rain. We're going to make this worth it for you. President Faust, board of overseers, faculty（才能）, friends, alumni（男校友）, proud parents, members of the Ad Board, and graduates of the greatest university in the world. I am honored（纪念） to be here with you today because-- let's face it-- you accomplished（完成） something I never could. If I get through this speech today, it'll be the first time I actually finished something here at Harvard（哈佛大学(美国)）.

  Class of 2017, congratulations. Now, I'm an unlikely speaker today, not just because I dropped out, but because we're technically（技术上） in the same generation. We walked this yard less than a decade apart. We studied the same ideas and slept through the same act 10 lectures. We may have taken different roads to get here, especially if you came all the way from the quad. But today, I want to share what I've learned about our generation and the world we're all building together.

  But first, these last couple of days have brought back a lot of good memories. How many of you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you got that email telling（ 告诉） you you got into Harvard（哈佛大学(美国)）? I was playing the video game Civilization（文明）, and I ran downstairs and got my dad. And for some reason, his first reaction was to video me opening the email. That could have been a really, really sad video. But I swear（宣(誓)） getting into Harvard（哈佛大学(美国)） is the thing my parents are most proud of me for.

  My mom is nodding（点(头)）. You'll know what I'm talking about. Look, guys, it's tough（坚韧的） to beat this. You'll see when you get out there. How many of you remember your first lecture here at Harvard? Mine was Computer Science 121 with the incredible Harry Louis.

  Harry. I was running late for class, so I threw on a t-shirt. And I didn't realize until afterwards（ 后来） that I put it on inside out and backwards, and my tag（标签） was sticking out the front. I couldn't figure（ 认为） out why no one in class would talk to me. Except for this one guy, KX Jin, he just went with it. We started doing our problem sets together, and now he runs a big part of Facebook.

  And that, class of 2017, is why you should be nice to people. But my best memory from Harvard is meeting Priscilla. I had just launched（发射） this prank website, FaceMash, and the ad board wanted to see me. Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out. My parents drove up here to help me pack my stuff. My friends threw me a going away party.

  Who does that? As luck would have it, Priscilla was at that party with her friends, and we met in line for the bathroom in the Fouhou bell tower. And in what must be one of the all-time most romantic lines, I turned to her and said, I'm getting kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly. Actually, any of you graduating today can use that line. I'm getting kicked out today. We need to go on a date fast.

  I didn't end up getting kicked out. I did that to myself. Priscilla and I started dating（注…日期）, and you know, that movie made it seem like FaceMash was so important to starting Facebook. It wasn't. But without FaceMash, I never would have met Priscilla. And Priscilla is the most important person in my life.

  So you could still say it was the most important thing I built in my time here. We have all started lifelong（终身的） friendships here, and some of us even families. That's why I'm so grateful to this place. Thanks, Harvard. Today, I want to talk about purpose. But I'm not here to give you the standard commencement about finding（找到） your purpose.

  We're millennials. We try to do that instinctively（本能地）. Instead, I'm here to tell you that finding your purpose isn't enough. The challenge for our generation is to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose. One of my favorite stories is when JFK went to go visit the NASA Space Center, and he saw a janitor（看门人） holding（拿住） a broom, and he asked him what he was doing. And the janitor replied, Mr.President, I'm helping put a man on the moon.

  Purpose is that feeling that you are a part of something bigger than yourself, that you are needed, and that you have something better ahead to work（使工作） for. Purpose is what creates true happiness. And you are graduating at a time when this is especially important. When our parents graduated, that sense of purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. But today, technology and automation（自动） are eliminating（排除） many jobs. Membership（资格） in a lot of communities has been declining（拒绝）.

  And a lot of people are feeling disconnected and depressed（ 消沉的） and are trying to fill a void（ 空隙） in their lives. As I've traveled around, I've sat with children in juvenile（青少年的） detention（拘留） and opioid addicts（有瘾的人） who told（ 告诉） me that maybe their lives would have turned out differently if they just had something to do and after school program or somewhere to go. I've met factory workers who know their old jobs aren't coming back and are just trying to find their path ahead. For our society to keep moving forward, we have a generational challenge to not only create new jobs, but create a renewed（使更新） sense of purpose. I remember that night I launched Facebook from that little dorm（宿舍） in Kirkland House. I went to Dokes with my friend KX.

  And I remember telling him clearly that I was excited to help connect the Harvard community, but one day someone would connect the whole world. The thing is, it never even occurred to me that that someone might be us. We were just college kids. We didn't know anything about that. There were all these great big technology companies with all these resources, and I just assumed（假定） one of them would do it. But this idea was so clear to us that all people want to connect.

  So we just kept working on it day after day after day. And I know that a lot of you are going to have your own stories just like this, a change in the world that seems so clear that you are sure someone else is going to do it. But they're not. You will. But it's not enough to have that purpose yourself. You also have to create a sense of purpose for others.

  And I found that out the hard way. You see, my hope was never to build a company. I wanted to have an impact. And as all these people started joining us, I just assumed that that's what they wanted to do too. So I never took the time to explain what it was that I hoped we'd build. A couple of years in, some big companies wanted to buy us.

  I didn't want to sell. I wanted to see if we could connect more people. And we were building the first version of newsfeed at the time. And I thought, if we could just launch this, it could change how we all learn about the world. Nearly everyone else wanted to sell. Without a sense of higher purpose, this was their startup dream come true.

  And it tore（ 撕裂） our company apart. After one particularly tense argument, one of my close advisors told me, if I hadn't agreed to sell the company right now, I would regret（懊悔） that decision for the rest of my life. Relationships were so frayed（使磨损） that within a year or so, every single person on our management team was gone. That was my hardest time leading Facebook. I believed in what we were doing, but I felt alone. And worse, it was my fault（过错）.

  I wondered if I was just wrong. An imposter, a 22-year-old kid who had no idea how things actually worked. Now, years later, I understand that is how things work when there's no sense of higher purpose. So it's up to all of us to create it so we can all keep moving forward together. And today, I want to talk about three ways that we can create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose. By taking on big, meaningful（ 意味深长的） projects together, by redefining（重新定义） equality（平等） so everyone has the freedom（自由） to pursue their purpose, and by building community all across the world.

  So first, let's take on big, meaningful projects. Our generation is going to have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation, like self（自己）-driving cars and trucks. But we have the potential（潜能） to do so much more than that. Every generation has its defining works. More than 300,000 people worked to put that man on the moon, including that janitor.