羅琳哈佛大學(xué)畢業(yè)典禮上的演講稿
下面小編就和大家分享羅琳哈佛大學(xué)畢業(yè)典禮上的演講稿，歡迎有在學(xué)英語(yǔ)或者熱愛(ài)英文演講稿的你們一起來(lái)閱讀，品讀。
2008年6月5日是哈佛大學(xué)的畢業(yè)典禮，請(qǐng)來(lái)的演講嘉賓是《哈利波特》的作者J.K.羅琳女士。她的演講題目是《失敗的好處和想象的重要性》(The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination)。她幾乎沒(méi)有談到哈里波特，而是談及年輕時(shí)一段非常艱辛的日子和對(duì)人生的思考。”
以下是英文文稿和中文翻譯：
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
Harvard University Commencement Address
J.K. Rowling
Copyright June 2008
As prepared for delivery
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、哈佛同仁和監(jiān)察委員會(huì)的各位員工，各位老師，家長(zhǎng)、同學(xué)們:
首先請(qǐng)?jiān)试S我說(shuō)一聲謝謝。哈佛給予我的不僅僅是無(wú)上的榮譽(yù)，還有連日來(lái)因?yàn)橐幌氲竭@個(gè)演講，帶來(lái)的恐懼以及恐懼導(dǎo)致的陣陣惡心讓我減肥成功。這真是一個(gè)雙贏的局面。現(xiàn)在我要做的就是深呼吸，瞇著眼睛看著眼前的大紅橫幅，安慰自己只是在世界上最大的矮人大會(huì)上。發(fā)表畢業(yè)演說(shuō)是一個(gè)巨大的責(zé)任，我的思緒一下子回到自己的畢業(yè)典禮上。那天做報(bào)告的是英國(guó)著名的哲學(xué)家Baroness Mary Warnock，通過(guò)對(duì)她的演講的回憶對(duì)我寫今天的演講稿給予了極大地幫助。因?yàn)槲也挥浀盟f(shuō)過(guò)的任何一句話了，這個(gè)發(fā)現(xiàn)讓我釋然，讓我不再有任何恐懼。我可能會(huì)無(wú)意中影響你，放棄在商業(yè)、法律或政治等有前途的職業(yè)而為眩暈的愉悅成為一個(gè)快樂(lè)的魔法師。你們都明白，如果在若干年后您還記得'快樂(lè)的魔法師' 這個(gè)笑話，說(shuō)明我已經(jīng)超越了Baroness Mary Warnock。
可實(shí)現(xiàn)的目標(biāo)：個(gè)人提高的第一步。其實(shí)，我為今天應(yīng)該告訴你們什么已經(jīng)殫精竭慮了。我曾問(wèn)自己：我從畢業(yè)到現(xiàn)在的這些年里，學(xué)到和了解了什么重要的教訓(xùn)。我已想出了兩個(gè)答案。在這個(gè)美好的一天，當(dāng)我們正聚集在一起慶祝您畢業(yè)的時(shí)刻，我已決定與你們談?wù)勈〉暮锰?另一方面，你們站在'現(xiàn)實(shí)生活'的門檻上，我要歌頌至關(guān)重要的想象力。這些似乎是不切實(shí)際或似是而非的選擇，但請(qǐng)?jiān)徫摇Ｗ屢粋�(gè)已經(jīng)42歲的人回顧在她21歲畢業(yè)時(shí)情景，是個(gè)讓人有點(diǎn)不舒服的經(jīng)歷。可以說(shuō)，我人生的前一部分，一直掙扎在自己的雄心和身邊的人對(duì)我的期望兩者之間取得平衡。我一直深信我唯一想做的事----寫小說(shuō)。不過(guò)，我的父母兩人都來(lái)自貧窮的背景，而且沒(méi)有任何一人上過(guò)大學(xué)。他們都堅(jiān)持認(rèn)為我過(guò)度的想象力是一個(gè)令人驚訝的個(gè)人怪癖，絕不可支付按揭或保證安穩(wěn)的退休金。他們希望我拿到一個(gè)職業(yè)學(xué)位。可我想學(xué)習(xí)英語(yǔ)文學(xué)。最終達(dá)成了一個(gè)折衷的意見(jiàn)，現(xiàn)在想起來(lái)仍不令人滿意，最終，我去學(xué)習(xí)現(xiàn)代語(yǔ)言。幾乎剛把車停在路盡頭的墻角(譯者加指去校報(bào)道)，我放棄了德語(yǔ)并逃到古典文學(xué)的殿堂。我不記得是否告訴我的父母我是學(xué)習(xí)古典文學(xué)的。也許他們很可能在我畢業(yè)那天才第一次發(fā)現(xiàn)我的專業(yè)是什么。在這個(gè)星球上的所有科目里，我想他們會(huì)認(rèn)為再?zèng)]有比希臘神話學(xué)更糟糕的了。
我想澄清一下：我不會(huì)因?yàn)樗麄兊挠^點(diǎn)而責(zé)怪我的父母。埋怨父母給你指錯(cuò)方向是有時(shí)間段的。當(dāng)你長(zhǎng)到自己可以掌握方向時(shí)，你就要自己承擔(dān)責(zé)任了。尤其是，我不會(huì)因?yàn)樽约合Ｍ灰?jīng)歷貧窮而責(zé)怪我的父母。他們是貧窮的，我也一直很貧窮。貧困帶來(lái)的恐懼，壓力有時(shí)是絕望，這意味著屈辱和苦難。用您自己的努力擺脫貧困這確實(shí)是一件對(duì)自己而言驕傲的事情。但貧窮本身只有對(duì)傻瓜而言才是浪漫的。
我在你們這個(gè)年齡時(shí)，最害怕的不是貧窮，而是失敗。像你們這樣大時(shí)，我明顯缺乏在大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)的動(dòng)力。我花了太久在咖啡吧寫故事，而在課堂的時(shí)間就很少了。我有一個(gè)通過(guò)考試的訣竅，并且數(shù)年間一直認(rèn)為我的生活在我的同齡人中是成功的，現(xiàn)在，我不愚蠢地假設(shè)因?yàn)槟銈兊哪贻p、天才和受過(guò)良好教育就從來(lái)沒(méi)有困難或心碎的時(shí)刻。才華和智商從來(lái)不會(huì)對(duì)命運(yùn)的反復(fù)無(wú)常有所準(zhǔn)備。我也不會(huì)假設(shè)大家都坐這里冷靜地滿足于自身的優(yōu)越感。但從哈佛畢業(yè)的事實(shí)表明，你們對(duì)失敗不熟悉。害怕失敗像渴望成功一樣強(qiáng)烈。事實(shí)上，您對(duì)失敗的理解可能和普通人對(duì)成功的看法不會(huì)太遠(yuǎn)。因?yàn)槟銈円呀?jīng)站在如此之高的位置。最終，我們所有人都必須自己決定什么構(gòu)成失敗，但如果你愿意，世界是相當(dāng)渴望給你一套標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的。因而我可以公平地講，從任何傳統(tǒng)的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)看，在我畢業(yè)僅僅七年后的日子里，我的失敗就達(dá)到了空前的規(guī)模：一個(gè)異常短暫的破裂的婚姻、失業(yè)、一個(gè)單親家長(zhǎng)，像在現(xiàn)代英國(guó)的窮人一樣，只是還沒(méi)有到無(wú)家可歸的地步罷了。眼前時(shí)刻浮現(xiàn)著父母和自己對(duì)未來(lái)的擔(dān)心。按照慣常的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來(lái)看，我是我所見(jiàn)過(guò)的最大的失敗者。現(xiàn)在，我不打算站在這里告訴你失敗是好玩的，我的那段生活經(jīng)歷是困窘不堪的;我更不知道新聞媒體所說(shuō)的童話故事般的革命;我也不知道那種困苦要持續(xù)多久;在相當(dāng)長(zhǎng)的一段時(shí)間里，任何盡頭的光明都只是一個(gè)希望而不是現(xiàn)實(shí)。
那么，為什么我要談?wù)撌〉暮锰幠?只是因?yàn)槭內(nèi)チ四悴恍枰臇|西。我不再偽裝自己，而是直接把所有精力放在對(duì)我最重要的工作上。如果我已經(jīng)在其他領(lǐng)域成功了，我可能絕不會(huì)再有機(jī)會(huì)找到在真正屬于自己的舞臺(tái)上取得成功的決心。我重新獲得了自由，因?yàn)槲易詈ε碌囊呀?jīng)發(fā)生了，但我還活著，我還有一個(gè)我深愛(ài)著的女兒，還有一個(gè)舊打字機(jī)和一個(gè)大創(chuàng)意(指寫哈利波特)。所以困境的谷底成為我重建生活的堅(jiān)實(shí)基礎(chǔ)。你可能永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)有我這種失敗的經(jīng)歷，但有些失敗，在生活中是不可避免的。毫無(wú)挫折的生活是不存在，除非你生活的萬(wàn)般小心，可有些失敗還是會(huì)發(fā)生。失敗讓我內(nèi)心安全，是我從通過(guò)考試中沒(méi)有得到過(guò)的。失敗教會(huì)我一些不能用其他方法獲得的東西，我發(fā)現(xiàn)自己有堅(jiān)強(qiáng)的意志，比想象中還多的原則，我也發(fā)現(xiàn)我擁有朋友----他們的價(jià)值遠(yuǎn)在紅寶石之上。從挫折中得到知識(shí)將使你更加明智和堅(jiān)強(qiáng)，也就是說(shuō)您比以往任何時(shí)候更有能力生存。你從來(lái)沒(méi)有真正認(rèn)識(shí)自己，或通過(guò)逆境的檢驗(yàn)認(rèn)識(shí)到您的朋友的力量，直到兩者經(jīng)受逆境的考驗(yàn)。對(duì)所有人而言，這種認(rèn)知是一個(gè)真正的禮物。這是痛苦的勝利比我取得的任何資格有著更高的價(jià)值。
給我一部時(shí)間機(jī)器，我會(huì)告訴21歲的自己：個(gè)人的幸福在于明白生活并不是看你的所得或成就。你的資歷、簡(jiǎn)歷，都不是你的生活，雖然你會(huì)遇到很多和我同齡或者更老一點(diǎn)的人依然混淆兩者。生活是困難的，復(fù)雜的，超出任何人的控制。謙恭地認(rèn)識(shí)到這一點(diǎn)將使你歷經(jīng)滄桑后能夠更好的生存。
你可能會(huì)認(rèn)為我選擇了我的第二個(gè)主題：想象力的重要性因?yàn)檫@是重建我生活的一部分。但事實(shí)并非完全如此，雖然我永遠(yuǎn)捍衛(wèi)睡前故事的價(jià)值，我已經(jīng)學(xué)會(huì)了想象擁有的更廣泛的意義。想象力不僅是人類獨(dú)具能力：設(shè)想還不存在的事物是所有發(fā)明和創(chuàng)新的源泉。這種改造和揭露的能力，使我們能夠?qū)ψ约何唇?jīng)歷的苦難者產(chǎn)生同理心。其中一個(gè)影響最大的經(jīng)歷在我寫哈利波特的生活之前，但大部分是在我隨后寫的那些書里。這個(gè)想法成形于我早期的工作經(jīng)歷。在20多歲時(shí)，盡管我可以在午餐時(shí)間里悄悄寫故事，可為了付房租，我做的主要工作是在倫敦總部的大赦國(guó)際研究部門。在我的小辦公室，我看到了人們?cè)诖颐χ袑懙男牛@些信是從極權(quán)主義政權(quán)那里偷運(yùn)出來(lái)的。那些人冒著被監(jiān)禁的危險(xiǎn)，告知外面的世界他們那里正在發(fā)生的事情。我看到那些無(wú)跡可尋的人的照片-----由他們的家人和朋友鋌而走險(xiǎn)地送到大赦國(guó)際來(lái)的。我看過(guò)拷問(wèn)受害者的證詞和被害的照片，我也讀過(guò)筆跡、目擊證人的供詞以及即決審判和處決的綁架和*犯的檔案。我有很多的合作者是前政治犯，他們已離開家園流離失所，或逃亡流放，因?yàn)樗麄兇竽懙貞岩烧拿裰鲉?wèn)題。來(lái)我們辦公室的訪客有告密者以及想了解迫害真相的人。
我將永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)忘記：一個(gè)非洲酷刑的受害者-----一名當(dāng)時(shí)比我還小的年輕男子，他因在故鄉(xiāng)的悲慘經(jīng)歷導(dǎo)致精神錯(cuò)亂。當(dāng)他在攝像機(jī)前講述被殘暴的摧殘的時(shí)候，他顫抖失控。他比我稍高一點(diǎn)，但當(dāng)時(shí)看來(lái)卻像個(gè)脆弱的孩童。后來(lái)，我被安排護(hù)送他到地鐵站，這名生活已被殘酷地打亂的男子，小心翼翼地握著我的手,祝我未來(lái)生活幸福!
并且只要我還活著，我就會(huì)記得走過(guò)一個(gè)空蕩蕩的的走廊。突然從背后的門里傳來(lái)我從未聽(tīng)過(guò)的尖叫的痛苦和恐懼，門打開了，研究員探出她的頭告訴我為坐在她旁邊的青年男子，調(diào)一杯熱飲料。他剛被告知消息：為了報(bào)復(fù)他對(duì)國(guó)家政權(quán)的批評(píng)，他母親已被捕并執(zhí)行了槍決。在我20多歲的時(shí)候，我工作的每一天，都在提醒我是多么的幸運(yùn)。生活在一個(gè)民選政府的國(guó)家，律師和公開審理，是每個(gè)人的權(quán)利。每天我都能看到很多有關(guān)惡人的證據(jù)，他們?yōu)榱双@得或維持權(quán)力而對(duì)自己的同胞所犯下的暴行。我開始做噩夢(mèng)，都和我的所見(jiàn)所聞?dòng)嘘P(guān)，并且我也了解到更多關(guān)于人類的善良。在國(guó)際特赦組織學(xué)到的比以前多得多。大赦動(dòng)員成千上萬(wàn)有自由信仰的人，去為那些因信仰而遭遇不幸的人奔走抗?fàn)帯Ｈ祟愅硇牡牧α浚l(fā)的集體拯救生命的行動(dòng)，釋放囚犯。眾多幸福安康的普通百姓，攜手合作挽救那些素不相識(shí)或再也不能相逢的人。這在道德上是中立的，是我生命中一段最謙恭和發(fā)人深省的生活經(jīng)歷。
不同于這個(gè)星球上的任何其他生物，人類可以學(xué)習(xí)理解未經(jīng)歷過(guò)的東西。他們可以設(shè)身處地為別人著想當(dāng)然，這是一種能力就像我虛構(gòu)的魔法世界一樣。這在道德上也是中立的。一個(gè)人可能會(huì)利用這種能力去操縱、或控制，但也有很多人選擇去了解或同情。很多人一點(diǎn)也不喜歡鍛煉自己的想象力，他們選擇待在舒適的生活范圍內(nèi)，從來(lái)不麻煩地去想想如果自己出生在別處一切會(huì)怎么樣。他們拒絕聽(tīng)到尖叫聲或向籠子里窺視，他們可以封閉自己的內(nèi)心。只要痛苦不觸及他們個(gè)人，他們可以拒絕去了解。我可能會(huì)因誘惑而嫉妒那樣生活的人，除了我不認(rèn)為他們會(huì)比我少做噩夢(mèng)。選擇住在狹窄的空間可導(dǎo)致某種形式的精神廣場(chǎng)恐懼癥，并給自己帶來(lái)恐懼感。我認(rèn)為不想看到更多怪物的人，他們常常更害怕。更甚的是，那些選擇不同情的人可能激活真正的怪獸，因?yàn)槲覀冏约簺](méi)有嚴(yán)懲邪惡，冷漠與無(wú)視卻讓我們犯下了邪惡的共謀罪。
在21歲時(shí)，我從古典文學(xué)中學(xué)到很多知識(shí)。其中之一我所不明白的是，希臘作家普魯塔克所說(shuō)的：我們內(nèi)心的實(shí)現(xiàn)將改變外在現(xiàn)實(shí)。那是一個(gè)多么驚人的論斷，并在我們生活的每天被無(wú)數(shù)次論證。這在某種程度上表明，我們與外部世界有逃不掉的瓜葛。事實(shí)上，我們以自己的存在來(lái)接觸其他人的生命。
但哈佛大學(xué)2008屆的畢業(yè)生們，你們中的多少人會(huì)去觸及他人的生命呢?你們的智慧、努力工作的能力以及所受的教育將給予你們獨(dú)特的地位和責(zé)任。即使您的國(guó)籍把你與別人分開了，你們絕大部份仍屬于世界上僅存的超級(jí)大國(guó)。你們表決的方式，你們生活的方式，你們抗議的方式，你們給自己的政府帶來(lái)的壓力，其影響力將超越你們的國(guó)界，這是你們的特權(quán)，也是你們的負(fù)擔(dān)。
如果您選擇使用您的地位和影響力去代表那些沒(méi)有發(fā)言權(quán)的人發(fā)出聲音;如果您不僅去幫助強(qiáng)者，而且還會(huì)同情并幫扶弱者;如果你會(huì)設(shè)身處地為不如你的人著想，那么，您的存在將不僅是你家族的驕傲，也是無(wú)數(shù)因你幫助而過(guò)上幸福生活的人的驕傲。我們不需要魔法來(lái)改變世界，我們自身已經(jīng)擁有了需要的所有力量：我們有能力更好地想象。
我的演講也接近尾聲了。對(duì)你們，我有最后一個(gè)希望，也是我在21歲時(shí)就一直在思考的。畢業(yè)那天坐在我身邊的朋友將是我終身的朋友。他們是我的孩子的教父母，是我在遇到麻煩是可以求助的人，是當(dāng)我用他們的姓名作為食死徒的名字而不會(huì)起訴我的朋友(譯者注：食死徒是哈利波特中人物在此指羅琳的朋友不會(huì)因?yàn)樗盟麄兊拿侄馄鹪V)。
在我們畢業(yè)的時(shí)候，我們因無(wú)盡的愛(ài)而在此相聚。我們有共同的永不再有的經(jīng)歷。當(dāng)然，如果我們中的任何人競(jìng)選首相，那么今天的照片將是極為寶貴的證明。所以，今天我可以給你們的，沒(méi)有比同伴的友誼更好的祝福了。
明天，我希望你們即使記不得我的名字，你還記得那些塞內(nèi)加，他是我在羅馬文學(xué)著作中結(jié)識(shí)的另一位哲學(xué)家，幫助我在我失去工作之時(shí)，尋找到古老的生活智慧：
生活就像故事一樣，不在乎長(zhǎng)度，而在于質(zhì)量。這才是問(wèn)題的關(guān)鍵。
我在此祝大家生活愉快!非常感謝!
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