失败的益处与想象力的重要性
——J.K罗琳女士在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲
译/水之木
尊敬的福斯特校长，哈佛理事会与监事会成员，全体教职工，骄傲的家长们，最重要的是，各位毕业学子们：
首先，请允许我说一声谢谢。哈佛不仅给予了我无上的荣誉邀我来此演讲，而且数周以来我因此经受的恐惧与战栗，让我成功减了肥。真是一举两得！现在，我要做的就是深呼吸，眯起眼看前方的红色横幅，安慰自己正置身全世界最大的格兰芬多集会。
发表毕业演讲责任重大，至少在回忆起自己的毕业典礼前我是这么想的。我毕业那天的演讲者是尊贵的英国哲学家玛丽·沃洛克男爵。回想她的演讲极大地帮助了我写下了这篇演讲——因为，我发现，我一个字也想不起来了。这一发现让我大舒了一口气，让我不必惊慌、忧虑自己会无意间让你们放弃商务、法律和政治的光明前途，而醉心成为一名快活的巫师。
看见没有？倘若多年以后，你还记得这个快活巫师的玩笑，我就赶超玛丽·沃洛克男爵啦！可达成的目标，是自我精进的第一步。
事实上，我为今天的演讲费尽心神、绞尽脑汁，我问自己当初想在毕业典礼上知道什么，以及那时迄今的21年间我又吸取了哪些重要教训。
我得到了两个答案。在我们欢聚一堂，共庆学术佳绩的美好时日里，我决定与你们谈谈失败的益处；在你们站在时常被称作“现实生活”的门槛面前，我想给你们讲讲想象力的重要性。
这两个答案看似不着边际，甚至自相矛盾，但请容许我把话说完。
回顾毕业典礼上21岁的自己，对于现年42岁的我并不是什么愉快的经历。我人生的前半部分一直挣扎在实现自己的抱负和满足身边人对我的期望之间，试图找到一种平衡。
我深信我此生唯一想做的事情就是写小说。然而，我的父母——他们都出身贫寒，谁也没有上过大学——认为我过于丰富的想象力只是一个可笑的个人怪癖，永远也无从帮我偿清房贷或争取到抚恤金。现在看来，这一想法像极了卡通动画里铁砧砸向脑门的画面。讽刺不讽刺？
自然，他们希望我去读职校；而我想攻读英国文学。最后，我们达成了一个双方都不满意的妥协：我改学现代语言。可没等我父母把车开过拐角，我便抛下德语，匆匆跑下古典文学的走廊。
我不曾记得告诉父母我在学习古典文学；他们很可能是在我毕业之日才首次发现的。在世上所有的科目中，我父母恐怕再讲不出一个比希腊神话更难换来一间独立宽敞浴室的学科了。
这里我想插一句作一下澄清——我不会因为父母的观点而责怪他们。指责父母给你指错方向是有期限的；一旦你有能力掌控自己的人生，你就应当为它负责。而且，我也无从怪罪父母希望我免于贫穷。他们自身贫穷，我后来也一度穷困潦倒。我挺赞成他们说贫穷不是什么高尚、磨练品质的经历。贫穷会招致恐惧、带来压力，有时会造成抑郁；贫穷会带来千千万万无足挂齿的羞辱与艰难险阻。通过自身努力走出贫穷无疑是一件值得骄傲的事情，但只有傻瓜才会美化贫穷本身。
我在你们这个年龄，最担心的不是贫穷，而是失败。
尽管我像你们这么大时，在大学里明显缺乏学习动力：在咖啡馆写小说的时间过长，在教室听课的时间太短；但我有逢考必过的天赋。而这一点，很多年来，都是我衡量自身与同辈成功的标尺。
但我没有愚蠢到以为你们年纪轻轻、天资聪慧、受过良好教育，就未曾经历过心碎、心痛与艰辛。天资与聪慧从没有让任何人逃脱过命运的魔掌，我一刻也不会假设在座各位已享受到了未经风霜、饱受优待又令人满意的人生。
然而，你们即将从哈佛毕业的事实意味着你们不曾经受过很多失败。你们对失败的恐惧丝毫不亚于你们对成功的渴求。不错，你们已经取得了如此骄人的成绩，你们眼中的失败也许跟常人眼中的成功相差无几。
但最终，我们都不得不自行判断什么才是失败。如果你松懈一点标准，这个世界很乐意为你提供一套对成败的价值评判。所以，坦白来说，从传统角度看，自我毕业之日起区区七年后，我便败得一塌糊涂。一场极为短暂的婚姻破裂了，我丢了工作，成为了单亲妈妈，沦落到当代英国穷到不能再穷的地步——就差没有流落街头了。我父母当年对我的担心与我对自己的担心都成为了现实。无论以何种标准来看，我都是当时据我所知最大的失败者。
现在，我不是要站在这里，告诉你们，失败很有意思。我人生的那段经历异常黑暗，我浑然不知那以后我的这段经历会被媒体改编成一种童话故事般的现实解决方案。我当时无从知晓这一隧道将通往何处，将持续多久，这条隧道尽头的灯光是希望之光，而不是现实之火。
所以，我为什么想和你们谈谈失败的益处？不过是因为失败将那些不重要的东西都剔除罢了。我不再把自己伪装成别人，而把所有力量全都倾注到唯一一件我认为重要的事情。倘若我在其他方面成功了，也许我永远也下不了决心在我坚信自己真正归属的领域成功。正因为我最大的恐惧实现了，我还活着，有一个我爱的女儿、一台旧打字机，还有一个大大的想法——我获得了彻底的自由。失败的谷底成为了我重塑生活的坚固基石。
你们也许永远不会失败到我的这步田地，但生活中经历一些失败在所难免。不在任何事上失败是不可能的，除非你生活得如此小心谨慎，根本就谈不上在生活——从这个意义上来讲，你已未战先败。
失败给了我一种我无法从通过考试那里获得的安全感。失败教会了我一些无法从其他途径了解自身的方面：我发现我有很强的意志力，我比想象中更自律；我还发现我有真正比宝石价值更高的朋友。
从挫败中获得的智慧与意志，意味着从此往后，你将更加坚信自己有生存下去的能力。只有经历了风霜考验，你才能真正了解自己、了解身边的人。这才是真正宝贵的财富——因其来之不易，而且它的价值远远高于我所获得的任何证书。
因此，倘若给我一个时间转换器，我会对21岁的自己说，个人的幸福在于明白人生不是一系列关于成就与所有物的核对清单。你的证书、你的简历不是你的人生，尽管你会遇到一些与我同龄的，甚至年纪比我更大的人混淆两者。人生很艰难、很复杂，不受任何人的完全掌控。对于这一点的谦卑能够让你在经历了人生的大起大落后更好地生活。
现在你也许会思忖，我的第二个主题——想象力的重要性，是否与它在我重建人生方面起到了重要作用有关。不尽然。尽管我个人会誓死捍卫睡前故事，但我学会了从更广义的角度珍视想象力。想象力不仅是我们人类独有的设想不存在事物的能力，是所有发明和创新的源泉；它还是人类改造、揭露现实的能力，能够让我们与自身经历不同的人感同身受。
其中，对我影响最大的经历发生在我写《哈利·波特》之前，这段经历为我随后写书提供了诸多想法。这些想法成形于我早期的工作经历。尽管午休时分，我时常会悄悄溜出去写小说，在20出头的年纪，我在国际特赦组织伦敦总部的非洲研究部门工作，以偿还房租。
在那里，在我小小的办公室中，我读到了专制政府下，男男女女冒牢狱之灾匆匆写下的信件，只为告诉外界他们在经历什么。我看到过急切的家人与朋友给特赦组织送来的照片，而照片上的人早已消失得无影无踪。我读到过酷刑犯的遗言，看到过他们伤痕累累的照片。我打开过目击者对绑架、强奸审判和执行梗概的亲笔记述。
我的多位同事都是前政治犯，流亡海外、自我放逐，只因他们胆敢违抗政府。我们办事处的来访者包括了那些前来提供消息，或者试图弄清他们走后发生了什么的人。
我永远也不会忘记一位非洲酷刑受害者，一位和我当时年龄相当的年轻人。他因为在故乡的经历而精神错乱。当他面对一台摄像机讲述在他身上曾受到的残忍迫害时，他止不住地颤抖。他比我高一英尺（约30厘米），却脆弱得像个孩子。我的任务是稍后将他护送到地铁站内。这位人生被残酷折磨得支离破碎的男性，非常礼貌地握起我的手，并祝我未来生活幸福。
只要我还活着一天，我就不会忘记那一次我走在一条空空荡荡的走廊上，突然听到门后传来一声我从未听过的痛苦而惊恐的尖叫。门开了，研究人员探出头来，让我赶紧为这位坐在她身旁的年轻男性准备一杯热饮。她刚刚得到消息，为报复这位男士对国家政府的不讳言行，他的母亲已被拘捕并执行处决。
我20岁出头工作的每一天都感受到了身处一个民主选举的政府，拥有民主代表，每个人都有权公开审判的国家是何其幸运。
每一天，我都会越来越多地看到恶人为赢得权力或维持权力在同胞身上犯下罪行的证据。我开始做噩梦——真正的噩梦——关于我看到的、听到的、读到的东西。
然而我也在国际特赦组织看到了我从未看到过的更多人性之善。
特赦组织动员成千上万位从未因信仰被折磨或监禁的人为那些遭受这种不幸的人奔走。人类同理心的力量造就了一种集体行为，能够拯救生命，释放囚犯。个人福祉及安全得到保障的众多普通人汇聚在一起，携手合作，拯救那些素不相识也永远不会谋面的人。我自己在其中小小的参与是我人生中最谦卑、最鼓舞人心的经历。
不同于地球上的其他生物，人类无需经历，就会学习，就能理解。人类能够将心比心，设身处地地为他人思考。
当然，这一力量，如同我虚构的魔法一样，在道德上是中立的。你可以用这种能力去操纵、去控制，也可以用同样的力量来理解、来同情。
有许多人选择根本不去运用他们的想象力。他们选择待在自己的舒适圈内，从来不愿花力气去想想如果生在别处会如何。他们可以拒绝听到尖叫，拒绝看向囚牢。他们可以对没有亲身触碰到他们的痛苦视而不见，听而不闻。他们可以拒绝知晓。
我兴许会嫉妒那么生存的人，只不过我不认为他们的噩梦会比我少。选择生活在狭小空间内的人，会在心理上害怕旷野，这种症状有它自己的恐惧。我认为不愿展开想象的人反而会招致更多怪兽，他们也因此更加惊恐。
而且，那些选择不去同情的人可能会激活真正的魔鬼。尽管我们没有真正参与恶行，但我们却通过冷漠与之勾结。
在我18岁学习古典文学的过程中，有一句话不甚理解。其一便是希腊作家普鲁塔克（Plutarch）的箴言：我们内心获得的东西将改造外部现实（What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality）。
这是一句惊人的断言，但在我们生活中的每一天都被无数次应验。这句话所表达的，一部分，是人类与外界的无法割舍的关联：只要我们存在，我们就会触及他人的生命。
那么，你们，哈佛2008届的毕业学子们，将触及多少人的人生呢？你们的智力，你们的努力，你们所接受的教育给予了你们独特的地位，也赋予了你们独特的责任。就连你们的国籍也令你们与众不同。你们中的绝大多数都属于这世界仅存的超级大国。你们投票的方式、你们生活的方式、你们抗争的方式、你们对政府施加的压力，都具有超乎寻常的影响力。这是你们的殊荣，也是你们的重任。
如果你选择利用你的地位和影响，为无力发声者发声；如果你们选择不仅与强者为伍，还积极帮助弱者；如果你们能设身处地地为没有你们优势的人着想，那么庆贺你存在的不光有你骄傲的家人，还有千千万万因你的帮助而现实得到改善的人。我们不需要魔法来改变世界，我们自身已拥有了改变世界的所有力量：我们有能力想象更好的世界。
我就快说完了。我的最后一个希望，是一个我21岁时就已经拥有的东西。在毕业典礼上坐在我身边的朋友，成为了我终生的挚友：他们成为了我子女的教父母，成为了我遇到困难时可以求助的朋友。他们也善意地没有因我拿他们的名字给食死徒取名而起诉我。在我当年的毕业典礼上，我们因相互间深厚的爱、一段不会回头的共同经历而汇聚一堂。当然，也留下了照片作为凭据，如果我们其中哪一位想竞选首相，这张照片就价值连城啦。
因此，今天，我祝愿你们收获与我同样的友谊。明天，哪怕你对我今天的讲座一个字都想不起来了，你要记住塞涅卡（Seneca），另一位我为逃避职业生涯，在古典文学走廊上寻找上古智慧时遇到的罗马先哲的话：
故事如此，生活亦如是：不在于长度，而在于质量，这才是最重要的（As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters）。
祝各位前程似锦。谢谢！
附原文：
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
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.
P.S.
“ I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.”大概是这样↓
