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President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.
So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
福斯特主席、哈佛同仁和监察委员会的各位员工，各位老师，家长、同学们:
首先请允许我说一声谢谢。哈佛给予我的不仅仅是无上的荣誉，还有连日来因为一想到这个演讲，带来的恐惧以及恐惧导致的阵阵恶心让我减肥成功。这真是一个双赢的局面。现在我要做的就是深呼吸，眯着眼睛看着眼前的大红横幅，安慰自己只是在世界上最大的矮人大会上。发表毕业演说是一个巨大的责任，我的思绪一下子回到自己的毕业典礼上。那天做报告的是英国著名的哲学家Baroness Mary Warnock，通过对她的演讲的回忆对我写今天的演讲稿给予了极大地帮助。因为我不记得她说过的任何一句话了，这个发现让我释然，让我不再有任何恐惧。我可能会无意中影响你，放弃在商业、法律或政治等有前途的职业而为眩晕的愉悦成为一个快乐的魔法师。你们都明白，如果在若干年后您还记得'快乐的魔法师'这个笑话，说明我已经超越了Baroness Mary Warnock。
可实现的目标：个人提高的第一步。其实，我为今天应该告诉你们什么已经殚精竭虑了。我曾问自己：我从毕业到现在的这些年里，学到和了解了什么重要的教训。我已想出了两个答案。在这个美好的一天，当我们正聚集在一起庆祝您毕业的时刻，我已决定与你们谈谈失败的好处；另一方面，你们站在'现实生活'的门槛上，我要歌颂至关重要的想象力。这些似乎是不切实际或似是而非的选择，但请原谅我。让一个已经42岁的人回顾在她21岁毕业时情景，是个让人有点不舒服的经历。可以说，我人生的前一部分，一直挣扎在自己的雄心和身边的人对我的期望两者之间取得平衡。我一直深信我唯一想做的事----写小说。不过，我的父母两人都来自贫穷的背景，而且没有任何一人上过大学。他们都坚持认为我过度的想象力是一个令人惊讶的个人怪癖，绝不可支付按揭或保证安稳的退休金。他们希望我拿到一个职业学位。可我想学习英语文学。最终达成了一个折衷的意见，现在想起来仍不令人满意，最终，我去学习现代语言。几乎刚把车停在路尽头的墙角（译者加指去校报道），我放弃了德语并逃到古典文学的殿堂。我不记得是否告诉我的父母我是学习古典文学的。也许他们很可能在我毕业那天才第一次发现我的专业是什么。在这个星球上的所有科目里，我想他们会认为再没有比希腊神话学更糟糕的了。
我想澄清一下：我不会因为他们的观点而责怪我的父母。埋怨父母给你指错方向是有时间段的。当你长到自己可以掌握方向时，你就要自己承担责任了。尤其是，我不会因为自己希望不要经历贫穷而责怪我的父母。他们是贫穷的，我也一直很贫穷。贫困带来的恐惧，压力有时是绝望，这意味着屈辱和苦难。用您自己的努力摆脱贫困这确实是一件对自己而言骄傲的事情。但贫穷本身只有对傻瓜而言才是浪漫的。
我在你们这个年龄时，最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。像你们这样大时，我明显缺乏在大学学习的动力。我花了太久在咖啡吧写故事，而在课堂的时间就很少了。我有一个通过考试的诀窍，并且数年间一直认为我的生活在我的同龄人中是成功的，现在，我不愚蠢地假设因为你们的年轻、天才和受过良好教育就从来没有困难或心碎的时刻。才华和智商从来不会对命运的反复无常有所准备。我也不会假设大家都坐这里冷静地满足于自身的优越感。但从哈佛毕业的事实表明，你们对失败不熟悉。害怕失败像渴望成功一样强烈。事实上，您对失败的理解可能和普通人对成功的看法不会太远。因为你们已经站在如此之高的位置。最终，我们所有人都必须自己决定什么构成失败，但如果你愿意，世界是相当渴望给你一套标准的。因而我可以公平地讲，从任何传统的标准看，在我毕业仅仅七年后的日子里，我的失败就达到了空前的规模：一个异常短暂的破裂的婚姻、失业、一个单亲家长，像在现代英国的穷人一样，只是还没有到无家可归的地步罢了。眼前时刻浮现着父母和自己对未来的担心。按照惯常的标准来看，我是我所见过的最大的失败者。现在，我不打算站在这里告诉你失败是好玩的，我的那段生活经历是困窘不堪的；我更不知道新闻媒体所说的童话故事般的革命；我也不知道那种困苦要持续多久；在相当长的一段时间里，任何尽头的光明都只是一个希望而不是现实。
那么，为什么我要谈论失败的好处呢？只是因为失败剥去了你不需要的东西。我不再伪装自己，而是直接把所有精力放在对我最重要的工作上。如果我已经在其他领域成功了，我可能绝不会再有机会找到在真正属于自己的舞台上取得成功的决心。我重新获得了自由，因为我最害怕的已经发生了，但我还活着，我还有一个我深爱着的女儿，还有一个旧打字机和一个大创意（指写哈利波特）。所以困境的谷底成为我重建生活的坚实基础。你可能永远不会有我这种失败的经历，但有些失败，在生活中是不可避免的。毫无挫折的生活是不存在，除非你生活的万般小心，可有些失败还是会发生。失败让我内心安全，是我从通过考试中没有得到过的。失败教会我一些不能用其他方法获得的东西，我发现自己有坚强的意志，比想象中还多的原则，我也发现我拥有朋友----他们的价值远在红宝石之上。从挫折中得到知识将使你更加明智和坚强，也就是说您比以往任何时候更有能力生存。你从来没有真正认识自己，或通过逆境的检验认识到您的朋友的力量，直到两者经受逆境的考验。对所有人而言，这种认知是一个真正的礼物。这是痛苦的胜利比我取得的任何资格有着更高的价值。
给我一部时间机器，我会告诉21岁的自己：个人的幸福在于明白生活并不是看你的所得或成就。你的资历、简历，都不是你的生活，虽然你会遇到很多和我同龄或者更老一点的人依然混淆两者。生活是困难的，复杂的，超出任何人的控制。谦恭地认识到这一点将使你历经沧桑后能够更好的生存。
你可能会认为我选择了我的第二个主题：想象力的重要性因为这是重建我生活的一部分。但事实并非完全如此，虽然我永远捍卫睡前故事的价值，我已经学会了想象拥有的更广泛的意义。想象力不仅是人类独具能力：设想还不存在的事物是所有发明和创新的源泉。这种改造和揭露的能力，使我们能够对自己未经历的苦难者产生同理心。其中一个影响最大的经历在我写哈利波特的生活之前，但大部分是在我随后写的那些书里。这个想法成形于我早期的工作经历。在20多岁时，尽管我可以在午餐时间里悄悄写故事，可为了付房租，我做的主要工作是在伦敦总部的大赦国际研究部门。在我的小办公室，我看到了人们在匆忙中写的信，这些信是从极权主义政权那里偷运出来的。那些人冒着被监禁的危险，告知外面的世界他们那里正在发生的事情。我看到那些无迹可寻的人的照片-----由他们的家人和朋友铤而走险地送到大赦国际来的。我看过拷问受害者的证词和被害的照片，我也读过笔迹、目击证人的供词以及即决审判和处决的绑架和*犯的档案。我有很多的合作者是前政治犯，他们已离开家园流离失所，或逃亡流放，因为他们大胆地怀疑政府的民主问题。来我们办公室的访客有告密者以及想了解迫害真相的人。
我将永远不会忘记：一个非洲酷刑的受害者-----一名当时比我还小的年轻男子，他因在故乡的悲惨经历导致精神错乱。当他在摄像机前讲述被残暴的摧残的时候，他颤抖失控。他比我稍高一点，但当时看来却像个脆弱的孩童。后来，我被安排护送他到地铁站，这名生活已被残酷地打乱的男子，小心翼翼地握着我的手,祝我未来生活幸福!
并且只要我还活着，我就会记得走过一个空荡荡的的走廊。突然从背后的门里传来我从未听过的尖叫的痛苦和恐惧，门打开了，研究员探出她的头告诉我为坐在她旁边的青年男子，调一杯热饮料。他刚被告知消息：为了报复他对国家政权的批评，他母亲已被捕并执行了枪决。在我20多岁的时候，我工作的每一天，都在提醒我是多么的幸运。生活在一个民选政府的国家，律师和公开审理，是每个人的权利。每天我都能看到很多有关恶人的证据，他们为了获得或维持权力而对自己的同胞所犯下的暴行。我开始做噩梦，都和我的所见所闻有关，并且我也了解到更多关于人类的善良。在国际特赦组织学到的比以前多得多。大赦动员成千上万有自由信仰的人，去为那些因信仰而遭遇不幸的人奔走抗争。人类同理心的力量，引发的集体拯救生命的行动，释放囚犯。众多幸福安康的普通百姓，携手合作挽救那些素不相识或再也不能相逢的人。这在道德上是中立的，是我生命中一段最谦恭和发人深省的生活经历。
不同于这个星球上的任何其他生物，人类可以学习理解未经历过的东西。他们可以设身处地为别人着想当然，这是一种能力就像我虚构的魔法世界一样。这在道德上也是中立的。一个人可能会利用这种能力去操纵、或控制，但也有很多人选择去了解或同情。很多人一点也不喜欢锻炼自己的想象力，他们选择待在舒适的生活范围内，从来不麻烦地去想想如果自己出生在别处一切会怎么样。他们拒绝听到尖叫声或向笼子里窥视，他们可以封闭自己的内心。只要痛苦不触及他们个人，他们可以拒绝去了解。我可能会因诱惑而嫉妒那样生活的人，除了我不认为他们会比我少做噩梦。选择住在狭窄的空间可导致某种形式的精神广场恐惧症，并给自己带来恐惧感。我认为不想看到更多怪物的人，他们常常更害怕。更甚的是，那些选择不同情的人可能激活真正的怪兽，因为我们自己没有严惩邪恶，冷漠与无视却让我们犯下了邪恶的共谋罪。
在21岁时，我从古典文学中学到很多知识。其中之一我所不明白的是，希腊作家普鲁塔克所说的：我们内心的实现将改变外在现实。那是一个多么惊人的论断，并在我们生活的每天被无数次论证。这在某种程度上表明，我们与外部世界有逃不掉的瓜葛。事实上，我们以自己的存在来接触其他人的生命。
但哈佛大学2008届的毕业生们，你们中的多少人会去触及他人的生命呢？你们的智慧、努力工作的能力以及所受的教育将给予你们独特的地位和责任。即使您的国籍把你与别人分开了，你们绝大部份仍属于世界上仅存的超级大国。你们表决的方式，你们生活的方式，你们抗议的方式，你们给自己的政府带来的压力，其影响力将超越你们的国界，这是你们的特权，也是你们的负担。
如果您选择使用您的地位和影响力去代表那些没有发言权的人发出声音；如果您不仅去帮助强者，而且还会同情并帮扶弱者；如果你会设身处地为不如你的人着想，那么，您的存在将不仅是你家族的骄傲，也是无数因你帮助而过上幸福生活的人的骄傲。我们不需要魔法来改变世界，我们自身已经拥有了需要的所有力量：我们有能力更好地想象。
我的演讲也接近尾声了。对你们，我有最后一个希望，也是我在21岁时就一直在思考的。毕业那天坐在我身边的朋友将是我终身的朋友。他们是我的孩子的教父母，是我在遇到麻烦是可以求助的人，是当我用他们的姓名作为食死徒的名字而不会起诉我的朋友（译者注：食死徒是哈利波特中人物在此指罗琳的朋友不会因为她用他们的名字而遭起诉）。
在我们毕业的时候，我们因无尽的爱而在此相聚。我们有共同的永不再有的经历。当然，如果我们中的任何人竞选首相，那么今天的照片将是极为宝贵的证明。所以，今天我可以给你们的，没有比同伴的友谊更好的祝福了。
明天，我希望你们即使记不得我的名字，你还记得那些塞内加，他是我在罗马文学著作中结识的另一位哲学家，帮助我在我失去工作之时，寻找到古老的生活智慧：
生活就像故事一样，不在乎长度，而在于质量。这才是问题的关键。
我在此祝大家生活愉快！非常感谢!
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