JK羅琳哈佛大學(xué)畢業(yè)典禮演講

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've experienced 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 fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.

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, 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 still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal 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 has 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 might 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 could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had 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 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 academically.

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 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 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 already 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 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 to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or 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.

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 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 in the 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 think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave 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 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 given 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 minds, imagine 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 can lead 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 may 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 transform for the better. 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, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used 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 can 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.

失敗帶來的好處，以及想象力的重要意義

在哈佛大學(xué)畢業(yè)典禮上的講話

J.K. Rowling

致Faust校長(zhǎng)，哈佛集團(tuán)以及哈佛監(jiān)事委員會(huì)的各位成員，各位教職員工，眾多自豪的家長(zhǎng)，以及最為重要的--各位畢業(yè)生們：

我想要說的第一句話是“謝謝你們”。這份感謝不僅來自于哈佛賦予我如此非同尋常的榮譽(yù)，更是由于幾個(gè)星期以來每當(dāng)我想到今天的致詞就會(huì)覺得頭暈惡心，因而終于成功的減肥了。這就是“雙贏”啊!現(xiàn)在，我只需要深呼吸幾次，瞄幾眼紅色的橫幅，然后裝模作樣的讓自己相信，我正身處世界上受過最好教育的哈里波特迷的盛大集會(huì)之中。

在畢業(yè)典禮上致詞意味著極大的責(zé)任--我這樣想著，直到我開始回想我自己的畢業(yè)典禮。那天致詞的是著名的英國(guó)哲學(xué)家 Baroness Mary Warnock。對(duì)于她的演講的回憶也極大地幫助了我完成現(xiàn)在這份，因?yàn)?，我完全想不起來她說了什么。這個(gè)具有解放意義的重大發(fā)現(xiàn)讓我無所畏懼的寫下自己的致詞，因?yàn)槲以僖膊槐負(fù)?dān)心會(huì)在不經(jīng)意間對(duì)你們?cè)斐捎绊?，以至于讓你們?yōu)榱顺蔀橐粋€(gè)快樂巫師的虛幻憧憬，就放棄自己在商業(yè)、法律界或政界的遠(yuǎn)大前程。

看到了吧?就算若干年后你們對(duì)我的演講的印象只剩下這個(gè)“快樂的巫師”的笑話，那我還是領(lǐng)先了Baroness Mary Warnock一步的。能夠達(dá)成的目標(biāo)是自我改善的第一步。

事實(shí)上，為了確定今天應(yīng)該對(duì)你們說些什么，我真是絞盡了腦汁。我問自己，在我自己的畢業(yè)典禮上，我曾期待知道什么?而自那天開始到現(xiàn)在的21年間，我又學(xué)到了那些教訓(xùn)?

我想到了兩個(gè)答案。在今天這個(gè)美妙的時(shí)刻，當(dāng)我們齊聚一堂慶祝你們?nèi)〉脤W(xué)業(yè)成功的時(shí)候，我決定跟你們談?wù)勈淼暮锰?。另外，在你們正要一腳踏入所謂“真實(shí)的生活”的時(shí)候，我還要高聲贊頌想象力的重大意義。

這些決定看起來頗為荒誕而矛盾，但是啊，請(qǐng)聽我慢慢道來。

對(duì)于一個(gè)已經(jīng)42歲的婦人來說，回顧21歲畢業(yè)典禮的時(shí)刻并不是一件十分舒服的事情。在前半生中我一直奮力掙扎，為了在自己的雄心壯志與親人對(duì)我的期盼之間取得一個(gè)平衡。

我自己認(rèn)定今生唯一想做的事情就是寫小說。然而，我的出身貧寒、從未受過大學(xué)教育的父母卻認(rèn)為，我那過于活躍的想象力只不過是個(gè)人的怪癖而已，永遠(yuǎn)也不能幫我償還貸款，也不能幫我弄到養(yǎng)老金。

他們希望我取得一個(gè)職業(yè)技能學(xué)位;而我卻向往在英國(guó)文學(xué)方面深造。最后我們互有妥協(xié)并達(dá)成一致，讓我去學(xué)習(xí)現(xiàn)代語言;而事后想來，這份妥協(xié)其實(shí)沒有讓任何一方滿意。于是，沒等父母的車?yán)@過路盡頭的拐角從視野里消失，我就丟下了德語，轉(zhuǎn)而沿著古典文學(xué)的道路快步走下去。

我記不得是否有告訴父母我其實(shí)在學(xué)習(xí)古典文學(xué);他們也可能在出席畢業(yè)典禮的時(shí)候終于覺察了事實(shí)真相。在地球上所有的學(xué)科當(dāng)中，當(dāng)涉及到“獲得使用正式員工專用洗手間的權(quán)利”的時(shí)候，我估計(jì)他們很難想到比希臘神話更沒用的學(xué)科了。

順便提一句，我必須聲明自己并沒有為父母的觀點(diǎn)而責(zé)怪他們的意思。你不能總是責(zé)怪父母指錯(cuò)了方向;當(dāng)你長(zhǎng)大成人、可以獨(dú)立掌舵的時(shí)候，這份責(zé)任就應(yīng)該由你獨(dú)立承擔(dān)了。況且，父母希望我永遠(yuǎn)都不要經(jīng)受貧窮，而我不能譴責(zé)這一期望。他們自己飽受貧寒之苦，而我也曾經(jīng)是個(gè)窮人，我十分贊同他們的想法--貧窮決不是什么高貴的經(jīng)歷。伴隨貧窮而來的是恐懼和緊張，有時(shí)還會(huì)陷入憂傷沮喪之中;這些都意味著無盡的卑微和艱難。憑借自己的力量掙脫貧困境地，這的確是值得自豪的事情，但是只有愚蠢的人才會(huì)一廂情愿的為貧窮本身涂抹浪漫的色彩。

當(dāng)我像你們這么大的時(shí)候，我最害怕的甚至還不是貧窮，而是失敗。

當(dāng)我像你們這么大的時(shí)候，我對(duì)大學(xué)里的課程沒什么動(dòng)力，總是在咖啡館里花上大把的時(shí)間寫小說，而用于聽課的時(shí)間則寥寥無幾。盡管如此，我卻有些讓自己能通過考試的竅門;而考試，在若干年中，就成了衡量我和我同齡人的成敗的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

我不會(huì)笨到認(rèn)為你們這些年輕、有天賦、受過良好教育的孩子就從來不知道困難和心碎的滋味。天賦和智力并不能讓人免受命運(yùn)的捉弄;我也從不認(rèn)為在這里的所有人都享有不可破壞的特權(quán)與滿足。

然而，畢業(yè)于哈佛大學(xué)這一事實(shí)暗示著你們并不十分熟悉失敗。驅(qū)動(dòng)你們前行的對(duì)于失敗的恐懼可能更為接近對(duì)于成功的渴望。事實(shí)上，你們心目中的失敗很可能與普通人設(shè)想的成功相差無幾，畢竟你們?cè)趯W(xué)業(yè)上的成功已經(jīng)高到遙不可及。

最終，我們都要按自己的想法給失敗下一個(gè)定義;但是如果你允許的話，這個(gè)世界會(huì)迫不及待的為你設(shè)定一套標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。因此我覺得，不管按照什么慣行標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，僅僅在畢業(yè)七年之后，我都確確實(shí)實(shí)的失敗了，而且敗得徹徹底底。我那罕見的短暫婚姻走到了盡頭，自己又失業(yè)了。一個(gè)單身母親，淪落到當(dāng)代英國(guó)最為貧困的境地，只不過還沒到無家可歸的程度而已。我父母害怕發(fā)生在我身上的事情，我害怕發(fā)生在自己身上的事情，都降臨了。無論按照什么標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來看，我都是我所知道的最大的失敗。

現(xiàn)在，我站在這里，告訴你們失敗可是件一點(diǎn)也不好玩的事情。那個(gè)時(shí)候我的人生被黑暗籠罩，根本想不到在未來的時(shí)光里這段經(jīng)歷竟會(huì)被報(bào)道為神話般的堅(jiān)定意志。那時(shí)候我不知道黑暗的隧道何時(shí)才是盡頭，而盡頭的任何光亮都像是渺茫的希望而非穩(wěn)固的現(xiàn)實(shí)。

為什么我還要談起失敗的好處呢?簡(jiǎn)單的說，是因?yàn)槭?huì)為我們揭去表面那些無關(guān)緊要的東西。我不再裝模作樣，終于重新做回自己，開始將所有的精力投入到自己在意的唯一作品。如果我此前在其它的任何什么方面有所成功，我恐怕都會(huì)失去在自己真正歸屬的舞臺(tái)上獲得成功的決心。我最大的恐懼終于成為現(xiàn)實(shí)，而我卻因此獲得了自由，我還活著，還有我深愛的女兒，我還有一架老式打字機(jī)和一個(gè)宏大的夢(mèng)想。這片頑固的低谷成為我腳下堅(jiān)定的基石，在此之上，我重筑了自己的人生。

你們也許不會(huì)像我摔得這樣慘，但是人生路上總會(huì)有些失敗。你也許可以毫無失敗的度過一生，但你將活得如此小心翼翼，就好像你幾乎沒有活過--不管從什么意義上講，你都注定要失敗的。

失敗賦予我內(nèi)心的安全感，而這是考試及格也不能讓我感受到的。失敗讓我明白關(guān)于自己的一些東西，這是除了失敗以外我決不可能獲得的認(rèn)知。我意識(shí)到自己擁有堅(jiān)強(qiáng)的意志，而且比我以前設(shè)想的還要自律;我還發(fā)現(xiàn)我擁有的朋友們是如此寶貴，其價(jià)值連寶石也不能媲美。

你在挫折中成長(zhǎng)，更聰明，更強(qiáng)壯，這意味著從此以后你已擁有了牢不可催的生存能力。直到通過逆境的考驗(yàn)，你才會(huì)真正了解自己，以及你周圍的人賦予你的力量。這些認(rèn)知都是寶貴的財(cái)富，我歷經(jīng)艱辛才獲得的財(cái)富，這比我得到的任何資格證書都更有價(jià)值。

如果能夠讓時(shí)光倒流，我會(huì)告訴21歲的自己，幸福在于懂得人生不是收獲和成就的清單。你的資格證書或你的簡(jiǎn)歷，并不是你的生活;盡管你將遇到很多我這樣年紀(jì)、甚至比我更老的人，他們卻還分不清楚兩者間的區(qū)別。生活是嚴(yán)酷的，也是復(fù)雜的，更不處于任何人的掌控;謙遜的懂得并接受這一點(diǎn)，會(huì)幫助安然你度過生活中的風(fēng)浪。

也許你們會(huì)以為，我之所以選擇第二個(gè)主題--想象力的重要性，是因?yàn)橄胂罅υ谖抑刂松鷷r(shí)發(fā)揮了巨大作用。但這并不是全部的原因。我固然到死也會(huì)捍衛(wèi)睡前故事的價(jià)值，但我還認(rèn)識(shí)到要在更為廣闊的范圍內(nèi)珍視想象力。想象力是人類獨(dú)有的預(yù)見未知的能力，它還是所有發(fā)明創(chuàng)造的源泉。它具有已被證實(shí)的最富變革性和啟示性的力量，而正是想象力讓我們能夠切身體會(huì)他人的經(jīng)驗(yàn)--雖然我們自己并未身臨其境。

對(duì)我影響最為深遠(yuǎn)的經(jīng)歷發(fā)生在哈里波特之前，而這一經(jīng)歷為我后來完成著作提供了很多信息。我在最早的全日制工作中獲得了啟示。在二十幾歲的時(shí)候，我在位于倫敦的國(guó)際特赦組織總部的研究部門工作，以獲得付房租的錢，而午餐的時(shí)候我就溜掉去寫小說。

在那里，我坐在小小的辦公室里閱讀來自集權(quán)統(tǒng)治下的地區(qū)的信件。男人和女人們急切的寫下潦草的文字，將信偷偷寄出來，冒著坐牢的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)告訴外界自己遭受了怎樣的對(duì)待。我看到那些無聲無息地失蹤了的人的照片，是由他們的絕望的親人和朋友寄到特赦組織來的。我讀著被嚴(yán)刑拷打的受害人的證詞，看著記錄他們的慘狀的照片。我打開手寫的親眼見證的記錄，記載著對(duì)于綁架和強(qiáng)奸案件的簡(jiǎn)單審訊和執(zhí)行。

我的很多同事以前都是政治犯。他們被迫離開家庭或流亡國(guó)外，因?yàn)樗麄冇杏職庖元?dú)立意志評(píng)判他們的政府。我們的辦公室的訪客有些是來提供信息的，也有人前來了解他們被迫放棄的同伴的情況。

我永遠(yuǎn)也無法忘記一個(gè)來自非洲的經(jīng)受嚴(yán)刑拷打的受害者。他是個(gè)年輕人，不會(huì)比那時(shí)的我年紀(jì)更大，在自己的祖國(guó)遭受的一切已經(jīng)使他有些精神失常。對(duì)著攝影機(jī)講述自己遭受的痛苦的時(shí)候，他無法抑制的戰(zhàn)栗著。他比我高一英尺，看上去卻像孩子一樣脆弱無助。隨后，在我按照吩咐護(hù)送他去地鐵的路上，這個(gè)人生已被殘暴摧毀的男人卻優(yōu)雅有禮的拉著我的手，祝我未來幸?？鞓贰?/p>

在我有生之年，我都會(huì)記得自己走過一條空曠的走廊的時(shí)候，從身后一扇緊閉的門內(nèi)傳出的尖叫。其中包含的痛苦和恐懼是如此強(qiáng)烈，我以后再?zèng)]聽過那樣的聲音。門打開了，一個(gè)工作人員探出頭，告訴我趕快跑去，給坐在她身邊的青年男子拿一杯熱飲。她剛剛告訴那位年青人，由于他本人公開反對(duì)自己國(guó)家的專制，他的母親已被抓走并處決了。

在我二十幾歲的時(shí)候，工作中的每一天，我都不斷被提醒著自己是多么的幸運(yùn)，能夠生活在一個(gè)民選政府管理的國(guó)家，人人都享有法律代理和公開審判的權(quán)利。

每天我都看見更多的人類的邪惡加諸于同胞的證據(jù)，這樣的罪惡僅僅是為了獲得或者維持權(quán)力。我開始做惡夢(mèng)，徹頭徹尾的惡夢(mèng)，夢(mèng)到那些我看到、聽到和讀到的事情。

然而，在國(guó)際特赦組織里我還了解了很多關(guān)于人類的好的一面，有些是我從不知道的。

國(guó)際特赦組織調(diào)動(dòng)了幾千人，他們從未因自己的信念而被折磨或監(jiān)禁，他們代表那些飽受折磨的人并為之行事。人類的同情心的力量引導(dǎo)了集體行動(dòng)，拯救生命，釋放被關(guān)押的人們。那些個(gè)人幸福和安全已經(jīng)得到保證的普通人，為了拯救他們并不認(rèn)識(shí)、甚至再也不會(huì)見面的陌生人而集結(jié)起來，匯聚成強(qiáng)大的群體。我個(gè)人在其中的參與，是我今生最為卑微、卻最為振奮的經(jīng)歷。

人類與地球上的其它生物不同。就算沒有親身經(jīng)歷，人類也可以學(xué)習(xí)和理解。人類可以將自己代入別人的思想之中，設(shè)想自己處于他人的境地。

當(dāng)然，這也是力量，就好像我的小說中的魔法。這是在道德上中立的力量，可以被用于操縱和控制，也可以被用于理解和同情。

還有很多人寧愿不去使用他們的想象力。他們選擇舒舒服服的呆在自己的經(jīng)歷之內(nèi)，從不費(fèi)事去想象如果他們生下來是別的人，那一切將會(huì)怎樣。他們可以拒絕傾聽叫喊聲，也不會(huì)窺視籠子內(nèi)的情況;對(duì)于任何沒有降臨到自身的痛苦，他們都可以關(guān)閉自己的頭腦和心靈;他們可以拒絕知道。

也許我禁不住會(huì)想要嫉妒這樣生活的人，只可惜我不相信他們做的惡夢(mèng)會(huì)比我少。選擇生活在狹窄的范圍里，會(huì)導(dǎo)致某種精神上的對(duì)于陌生環(huán)境的恐懼癥，并由此產(chǎn)生相應(yīng)的害怕心理。我認(rèn)為那些自己決定不去想象的人會(huì)看到更多的怪物。他們通常會(huì)更害怕。

另外，選擇不去同情的人會(huì)養(yǎng)育現(xiàn)實(shí)中的怪物。就算我們自己沒有親自作出邪惡的事情，我們對(duì)于邪惡的無動(dòng)于衷就等同于和它同謀。

十八歲時(shí)，為了尋找那時(shí)我無法描述的目的，我踏上了古典文學(xué)的探險(xiǎn)道路;當(dāng)走到盡頭的時(shí)候，我學(xué)到了很多東西，其中之一就是希臘作家Plutarch的這句話：我們?cè)趦?nèi)心的所得，將改變外界的現(xiàn)實(shí)。

這句驚人的宣言卻每天都被我們的生活證實(shí)無數(shù)次。在某種程度上，它表達(dá)了我們與外面世界的無法逃避的聯(lián)系;它道出這樣一個(gè)事實(shí)，僅僅是我們自身的存在，就已經(jīng)觸碰到了他人的生活。

但是，哈佛大學(xué)2008屆的畢業(yè)生們，你們又將對(duì)他人的生活深入多少呢?你們的智慧、你們應(yīng)對(duì)高難度工作的才能、你們謀求并接受到的教育，都賦予你們

獨(dú)一無二的身份，以及獨(dú)一無二的責(zé)任。即使你們的國(guó)籍將你們區(qū)隔開來。你們中的大多數(shù)，屬于這個(gè)世界目前僅存的超級(jí)大國(guó)。你們投票的方式，你們生活的方式，你們抗議的方式，你們對(duì)于政府施加的壓力，其影響都會(huì)遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出你們自身的界限。那就是你們的特權(quán)，也是你們背負(fù)的重任。

如果你選擇了，用你的身份和影響力來提高你的聲音，為那些沒有聲音的人吶喊;如果你選擇了，不僅認(rèn)同權(quán)勢(shì)群體，更要與弱勢(shì)群體為伍;如果你保留了想象的能力，能夠與不具備你的優(yōu)勢(shì)的那些人感同身受。那么，不僅僅是你的家人會(huì)為你自豪，更有成千上萬的、因?yàn)槟愣畹酶玫娜藭?huì)為你歡呼。我們并不需要魔法來改造世界。我們?cè)趦?nèi)心深處已經(jīng)擁有了所需的所有力量：我們擁有想象更好的世界的力量。

我的話快要說完了。最后，我對(duì)你們還有一個(gè)期望，在我21歲的時(shí)候我就懷有這個(gè)期望。在畢業(yè)典禮上與我坐在一起的朋友們，后來成了我一生的朋友。他們是我的孩子們的教父和教母。他們是我陷入困境時(shí)可以尋求幫助的人。他們是如此寬容的朋友，就連名字被我用來命名食死徒的時(shí)候也沒有起訴我。在畢業(yè)典禮上，我們被心中澎湃的激情緊密聯(lián)結(jié)，被共同分享的寶貴時(shí)光緊密聯(lián)結(jié)，當(dāng)然，也被某個(gè)共識(shí)緊密聯(lián)結(jié)--如果我們中的某人有朝一日當(dāng)選為英國(guó)首相，那我們持有的合影照片肯定會(huì)價(jià)值不菲。

因此，今天，我能夠送給你們的最好的祝福，就是這樣的友誼。明天，我希望就算你記不起我說過的任何一個(gè)字，你還是能夠想起Seneca說過的話。那時(shí)我已遠(yuǎn)離職業(yè)生涯的階梯，轉(zhuǎn)而尋找古代的智慧。我在沿著古典文學(xué)的走廊飛奔時(shí)遇到了這個(gè)古羅馬的家伙。

他說：

人生就像故事，不在于漫長(zhǎng)，而在于精彩。

我祝你們所有人一生幸福。

非常感謝。