【正文】 鄉(xiāng)的經(jīng)歷而精神錯亂。 Many of my coworkers were expolitical 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 e 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，他們已離開家園流離失所，或逃亡流放，因為他們敢于懷疑政府、獨立思考。我看過拷問受害者的證詞和被害的照片。那些人冒著被監(jiān)禁的危險，告知外面的世界他們那里正在發(fā)生的事情。這些想法成形于我早期的工作經(jīng)歷，在20 多歲時，盡管我可以在午餐時間里悄悄寫故事，可為了付房租，我做的主要工作是在倫敦總部的大赦國際研究部門。 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 International39。雖然我愿誓死捍衛(wèi)睡前要給孩子講故事的價值觀，我對想象力的理解已經(jīng)有了更廣泛的含義。生活是艱辛的，復(fù)雜的，超出任何人的控制能力，而謙恭地了解這一點，將使你歷經(jīng)滄桑后能夠更好的生存。 So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21yearold self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist 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 plicated, and beyond anyone39。只有在逆境來臨的時候，你才會真正認(rèn)識你自己，了解身邊的人。我還發(fā)現(xiàn)，我擁有比寶石更加珍貴的朋友。失敗讓我看清自己，這也是我通過其他方式無法體會的。 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。生活不可能沒有一點失敗，除非你生活的萬般小心，而那也意味著你沒有真正在生活了。所以困境的谷底，成為我重建生活的堅實基礎(chǔ)。如果不是沒有在其他領(lǐng)域成功過，我可能就不會找到，在一個我確信真正屬于的舞臺上取得成功的決心。 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. 那么為什么我要談?wù)撌〉暮锰幠兀恳驗槭∫馕吨鴦冸x掉那些不必要的東西。那段日子是我生命中的黑暗歲月，我不知道它是否代表童話故事里需要歷經(jīng)的磨難，更不知道自己還要在黑暗中走多久。按照慣常的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來看，我也是我所知道的最失敗的人。除了流浪漢，我是當(dāng)代英國最窮的人之一，真的一無所有。 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 shortlived 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 e to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew. 最終，我們所有人都必須自己決定什么算作失敗，但如果你愿意，世界是相當(dāng)渴望給你一套標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的。你們也許極其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失敗。 However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very wellacquainted 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 person39。 I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and welleducated, you have never known hardship or heartache. 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. 我不想愚蠢地假設(shè)，因為你們年輕、有天份，并且受過良好的教育，就從來沒有遇到困難或心碎的時刻。 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. 我在您們這么大時，明顯缺乏在大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)的動力，我花了太久時間在咖啡吧寫故事，而在課堂的時間卻很少?？孔约旱呐[