失敗的好處

J.+K.+Rowling+

n 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.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, 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 German. 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 would like to make it clear that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. I cannot criticize 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 romanticized only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

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 persons idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. 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 area I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, 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. 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.

endprint

Harvard graduates, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.

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, becanse we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: We have the power to imagine better.

我們在這個美好的日子里相聚在一起，慶祝你們在學業上獲得成功，而我決定跟你們談談失敗的好處。

回首我21歲畢業那年，我唯一想做的事情就是寫小說。但是，我的父母出身貧寒，沒有接受過大學教育。他們認為，我那些不安分的想象力只是一種可笑的怪癖，根本不能用來還房貸，或者掙來養老金。

他們希望我再去讀個專業學位，而我想去攻讀英國文學。最后，我們達成了一個雙方都不甚滿意的妥協：我改學德語。可是父母的車剛駛過路盡頭的拐角，我便立刻放棄德語，報名學習古典文學。

我要申明，我并不責怪父母。他們只是希望我不要過窮日子，我不能批評他們。他們自己很窮，我后來一度也很窮。所以，我也認同他們的觀點，貧窮是一種悲慘的經歷。

貧窮會帶來恐懼、壓力，有時還有抑郁。它意味著許許多多的羞辱和艱辛。靠自己的努力擺脫貧窮，確實讓人自豪，但是只有傻瓜才會將貧窮本身浪漫化。

在你們這個年齡的時候，我最害怕的不是貧窮，而是失敗。

然而，你們是哈佛畢業生的這個事實，說明你們并不很了解失敗。你們也許極其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失敗。說實話，你們眼中的失敗，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，畢竟你們在學業上已經很成功了。

我并不是想站在這里告訴你們，失敗是多么有趣。為什么我說失敗是有好處的？就因為失敗將那些非本質的東西都剝離了。我不再偽裝自己，我找到了真正的我。我將自己所有的精力投入到完成對我最重要的唯一一項工作中去。要是我以前在其他地方成功了，那么我也許永遠不會有這樣的決心，投身于這個我自信真正屬于我的領域。我自由了，因為我最大的恐懼已經成為現實，而我卻依然活著，依然有一個深愛著的女兒，還有一臺舊打字機和一個大大的夢想。我生命中的最低點，成為我重建生活的堅實基礎。我發現，我比自己認為的有更強的意志和決心。我還發現，我有一些比寶石更珍貴的朋友。

知道自己在經歷挫折之后變得更加聰明、更加強壯，這說明從此以后你有了繼續生存下去的能力。只有經歷過逆境的檢驗，你才會真正了解自己，了解你結識的人。這種了解是真正的財富，雖然是用痛苦換來的，但是對我來說，它比我以前得到的任何證書都有用。

各位哈佛大學的畢業生，你們的能力、你們所受的教育，給了你們獨一無二的地位，也給了你們獨一無二的責任。

如果你們選擇用自己的地位和影響為那些被忽略的人們說話，如果你們選擇對有權有勢的人和無權無勢者給予同樣的關注，如果你們學會設想那些條件不如你們的人是如何生活的，那么，不僅你們的親人將為你們的存在感到自豪，而且千千萬萬的人將因為你們的幫助而生活得更好。我們不需要魔法來改變世界，因為我們自己的體內已經擁有我們所需的全部力量：那就是我們一直在夢想，讓這個世界變得更美好。

“魔法媽媽”J. K. 羅琳

. K. 羅琳（J. K. Rowling），英國女作家，創作了風靡全球的“哈利·波特”系列小說。24歲那年，在羅琳從曼徹斯特前往倫敦的火車旅途中，一個瘦弱、戴著眼鏡的黑發小巫師，一直在車窗外對著她微笑。他一下子闖進了她的生命，使她萌生了創作哈利·波特的念頭。雖然當時她的手邊沒有紙和筆，但她開始天馬行空地想象。于是，哈利·波特誕生了——一個十歲的小男孩，瘦小的個子，亂蓬蓬的黑頭發，明亮的綠色眼睛，戴著圓形眼鏡，前額上有一道細長、閃電狀的傷疤。（佚名）

endprint