The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

王清

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 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 Gryffindors' reunion.

首先请允许我说一声谢谢。哈佛不仅给了我无上的荣誉，连日来为这个演讲经受的恐惧和紧张，更令我减肥成功。这真是一个双赢的局面。现在我要做的就是深呼吸几下，眯着眼睛看看前面的大红横幅，安慰自己正在世界上最大的魔法学院聚会上。

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.

发表毕业演说是一个巨大的责任，至少在我回忆自己当年的毕业典礼前是这么认为的。那天做演讲的是英国著名的哲学家Baroness Mary Warnock，对她演讲的回忆，对我写今天的演讲稿，产生了极大的帮助，因为我不记得她说过的任何一句话了。这个发现让我释然，让我不再担心我可能会无意中影响你放弃在商业，法律或政治上的大好前途，转而醉心于成为一个快乐的魔法师。

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 to self-improvement.

你们看，如果在若干年后你们还记得“快乐的魔法师”这个笑话，那就证明我已经超越了Baroness Mary Warnock。建立可实现的目标——这是提高自我的第一步。

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.

实际上，我为今天应该和大家谈些什么绞尽了脑汁。我问自己什么是我希望早在毕业典礼上就该了解的，而从那时起到现在的21年间，我又得到了什么重要的启示。

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.

我想到了两个答案。在这美好的一天，当我们一起庆祝你们取得学业成就的时刻，我希望告诉你们失败有什么样的益处；在你们即将迈向“现实生活”的道路之际，我还要褒扬想象力的重要性。

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but bear with me.

这些似乎是不切实际或自相矛盾的选择，但请先容我讲完。

王清

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.

回顾21岁刚刚毕业时的自己，对于今天42岁的我来说，是一个稍微不太舒服的经历。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之间。

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.

我一直深信，自己唯一想做的事情，就是写小说。不过，我的父母，他们都来自贫穷的背景，没有任何一人上过大学，坚持认为我过度的想象力是一个令人惊讶的个人怪癖，根本不足以让我支付按揭，或者取得足够的养老金。

I know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but…

我现在明白反讽就像用卡通铁砧去打击你，但...

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.

他们希望我去拿个职业学位，而我想去攻读英国文学。最后，达成了一个双方都不甚满意的妥协：我改学现代语言。可是等到父母一走开，我立刻放弃了德语而报名学习古典文学。

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.

我不记得将这事告诉了父母，他们可能是在我毕业典礼那一天才发现的。我想，在全世界的所有专业中，他们也许认为，不会有比研究希腊神话更没用的专业了，根本无法换来一间独立宽敞的卫生间。

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.

我想澄清一下：我不会因为父母的观点，而责怪他们。埋怨父母给你指错方向是有一个时间段的。当你成长到可以控制自我方向的时候，你就要自己承担责任了。尤其是，我不会因为父母希望我不要过穷日子，而责怪他们。他们一直很贫穷，我后来也一度很穷，所以我很理解他们。贫穷并不是一种高贵的经历，它带来恐惧、压力、有时还有绝望，它意味着许许多多的羞辱和艰辛。靠自己的努力摆脱贫穷，确实可以引以自豪，但贫穷本身只有对傻瓜而言才是浪漫的。

王清

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

我在你们这个年龄，最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。

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.

我在您们这么大时，明显缺乏在大学学习的动力，我花了太久时间在咖啡吧写故事，而在课堂的时间却很少。我有一个通过考试的诀窍，并且数年间一直让我在大学生活和同龄人中不落人后。

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.

我不想愚蠢地假设，因为你们年轻、有天份，并且受过良好的教育，就从来没有遇到困难或心碎的时刻。拥有才华和智慧，从来不会使人对命运的反复无常有所准备；我也不会假设大家坐在这里冷静地满足于自身的优越感。

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.

相反，你们是哈佛毕业生的这个事实，意味着你们并不很了解失败。你们也许极其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失败。说实话，你们眼中的失败，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，毕竟你们在学业上已经达到很高的高度了。

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.

最终，我们所有人都必须自己决定什么算作失败，但如果你愿意，世界是相当渴望给你一套标准的。所以我承认命运的公平，从任何传统的标准看，在我毕业仅仅七年后的日子里，我的失败达到了史诗般空前的规模：短命的婚姻闪电般地破裂，我又失业成了一个艰难的单身母亲。除了流浪汉，我是当代英国最穷的人之一，真的一无所有。当年父母和我自己对未来的担忧，现在都变成了现实。按照惯常的标准来看，我也是我所知道的最失败的人。

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.

现在，我不打算站在这里告诉你们，失败是有趣的。那段日子是我生命中的黑暗岁月，我不知道它是否代表童话故事里需要历经的磨难，更不知道自己还要在黑暗中走多久。很长一段时间里，前面留给我的只是希望，而不是现实。

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.

那么为什么我要谈论失败的好处呢？因为失败意味着剥离掉那些不必要的东西。我因此不再伪装自己、远离自我，而重新开始把所有精力放在对我最重要的事情上。如果不是没有在其他领域成功过，我可能就不会找到，在一个我确信真正属于的舞台上取得成功的决心。我获得了自由，因为最害怕的虽然已经发生了，但我还活着，我仍然有一个我深爱的女儿，我还有一个旧打字机和一个很大的想法。所以困境的谷底，成为我重建生活的坚实基础。

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.

你们可能永远没有达到我经历的那种失败程度，但有些失败，在生活中是不可避免的。生活不可能没有一点失败，除非你生活的万般小心，而那也意味着你没有真正在生活了。无论怎样，有些失败还是注定地要发生。

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.

失败使我的内心产生一种安全感，这是我从考试中没有得到过的。失败让我看清自己，这也是我通过其他方式无法体会的。我发现，我比自己认为的，要有更强的意志和决心。我还发现，我拥有比宝石更加珍贵的朋友。

王清

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.

从挫折中获得智慧、变得坚强，意味着你比以往任何时候都更有能力生存。只有在逆境来临的时候，你才会真正认识你自己，了解身边的人。这种了解是真正的财富，虽然是用痛苦换来的，但比我以前得到的任何资格证书都有用。

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.

如果给我一部时间机器，我会告诉21岁的自己，人的幸福在于知道生活不是一份漂亮的成绩单，你的资历、简历，都不是你的生活，虽然你会碰到很多与我同龄或更老一点的人今天依然还在混淆两者。生活是艰辛的，复杂的，超出任何人的控制能力，而谦恭地了解这一点，将使你历经沧桑后能够更好的生存。

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.

对于第二个主题的选择——想象力的重要性——你们可能会认为是因为它对我重建生活起到了帮助，但事实并非完全如此。虽然我愿誓死捍卫睡前要给孩子讲故事的价值观，我对想象力的理解已经有了更广泛的含义。想象力不仅仅是人类设想还不存在的事物这种独特的能力，为所有发明和创新提供源泉，它还是人类改造和揭露现实的能力，使我们同情自己不曾经受的他人苦难。

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.

其中一个影响最大的经历发生在我写哈利波特之前，为我随后写书提供了很多想法。这些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。

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.

在我的小办公室，我看到了人们匆匆写的信件，它们是从极权主义政权被偷送出来的。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。我看到了那些无迹可寻的人的照片，它们是被那些绝望的家人和朋友送来的。我看过拷问受害者的证词和被害的照片。我打开过手写的目击证词，描述绑架和强奸犯的审判和处决。

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 who they had left behind.

我有很多的同事是前政治犯，他们已离开家园流离失所，或逃亡流放，因为他们敢于怀疑政府、独立思考。来我们办公室的访客，包括那些前来提供信息，或想设法知道那些被迫留下的同志发生了什么事的人。

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.

我将永远不会忘记一个非洲酷刑的受害者，一名当时还没有我大的年轻男子，他因在故乡的经历而精神错乱。在摄像机前讲述被残暴地摧残的时候，他颤抖失控。他比我高一英尺，却看上去像一个脆弱的儿童。我被安排随后护送他到地铁站，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。

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.

只要我活着，我还会记得，在一个空荡荡的的走廊，突然从背后的门里，传来我从未听过的痛苦和恐惧的尖叫。门打开了，调查员探出头请求我，为坐在她旁边的青年男子，调一杯热饮料。她刚刚给他的消息是，为了报复他对国家政权的批评，他的母亲已经被捕并执行了枪决。

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.

在我20多岁的那段日子，每一天的工作，都在提醒我自己是多么幸运。生活在一个民选政府的国家，依法申述与公开审理，是所有人的权利。

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.

每一天，我都能看到更多有关恶人的证据，他们为了获得或维持权力，对自己的同胞犯下暴行。我开始做噩梦，真正意义上的噩梦，全都和我所见所闻有关。

王清

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

同时在这里我也了解到更多关于人类的善良，比我以前想象的要多很多。

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.

大赦动员成千上万没有因为个人信仰而受到折磨或监禁的人，去为那些遭受这种不幸的人奔走。人类同理心的力量，引发集体行动，拯救生命，解放囚犯。个人的福祉和安全有保证的普通百姓，携手合作，大量挽救那些他们素不相识，也许永远不会见面的人。我用自己微薄的力量参与了这一过程，也获得了更大的启发。

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.

不同于在这个星球上任何其他的动物，人类可以学习和理解未曾经历过的东西。他们可以将心比心、设身处地的理解他人。

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.

当然，这种能力，就像在我虚构的魔法世界里一样，在道德上是中立的。一个人可能会利用这种能力去操纵控制，也有人选择去了解同情。

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.

而很多人选择不去使用他们的想象力。他们选择留在自己舒适的世界里，从来不愿花力气去想想如果生在别处会怎样。他们可以拒绝去听别人的尖叫，看一眼囚禁的笼子；他们可以封闭自己的内心，只要痛苦不触及个人，他们可以拒绝去了解。

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.

我可能会受到诱惑，去嫉妒那样生活的人。但我不认为他们做的噩梦会比我更少。选择生活在狭窄的空间，可以导致不敢面对开阔的视野，给自己带来恐惧感。我认为不愿展开想像的人会看到更多的怪兽，他们往往更感到更害怕。

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.

更甚的是，那些选择不去同情的人，可能会激活真正的怪兽。因为尽管自己没有犯下罪恶，我们却通过冷漠与之勾结。

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.

我18岁开始从古典文学中汲取许多知识，其中之一当时并不完全理解，那就是希腊作家普鲁塔克所说：我们内心获得的，将改变外在的现实。

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.

那是一个惊人的论断，在我们生活的每一天里被无数次证实。它指明我们与外部世界有无法脱离的联系，我们以自身的存在接触着他人的生命。

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.

但是，哈佛大学的2008届毕业生们，你们多少人有可能去触及他人的生命？你们的智慧，你们努力工作的能力，以及你们所受到的教育，给予你们独特的地位和责任。甚至你们的国籍也让你们与众不同，你们绝大部份人属于这个世界上唯一的超级大国。你们表决的方式，你们生活的方式，你们抗议的方式，你们给政府带来的压力，具有超乎寻常的影响力。这是你们的特权，也是你们的责任。

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.

如果你选择利用自己的地位和影响，去为那些没有发言权的人发出声音；如果你选择不仅与强者为伍，还会同情帮扶弱者；如果你会设身处地为不如你的人着想，那么你的存在，将不仅是你家人的骄傲，更是无数因为你的帮助而改变命运的成千上万人的骄傲。我们不需要改变世界的魔法，我们自己的内心就有这种力量：那就是我们一直在梦想，让这个世界变得更美好。

王清

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.

我的演讲要接近尾声了。对你们，我有最后一个希望，也是我21岁时就有的。毕业那天坐在我身边的朋友现在是我终身的挚交，他们是我孩子的教父母，是在我遇到麻烦时愿意伸出援手，在我用他们的名字给哈利波特中的“食死徒”起名而不会起诉我的朋友。我们在毕业典礼时坐在了一起，因为我们关系亲密，拥有共同的永远无法再来的经历，当然，也因为假想要是我们中的任何人竞选首相，那照片将是极为宝贵的关系证明。

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:

所以今天我可以给你们的，没有比拥有知己更好的祝福了。明天，我希望即使你们不记得我说的任何一个字，你们还能记得哲学家塞内加的一句至理明言。我当年没有顺着事业的阶梯向上攀爬，转而与他在古典文学的殿堂相遇，他的古老智慧给了我人生的启迪：

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

生活就像故事一样：不在乎长短，而在于质量，这才是最重要的。

I wish you all very good lives.

我祝愿你们都有美好的生活。

Thank you very much.

非常感谢大家。