【正文】 ceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of being a gay see? If all you remember in years to e is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve e out ahead of Baroness Mary goals: the first step to self , I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you 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 have e up with two this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with back at the 21yearold that I was at graduation, is a slightly unfortable experience for the 42yearold that she has my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write , 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 know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, they hoped that I would take a vocational degree。they might well have found out for the first time on graduation 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 would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction。it means a thousand petty humiliations and out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but 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 am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and welleducated, you have never known hardship or 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 , the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very wellacquainted with might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for , your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already , 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 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 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 fears that 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 , I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is 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 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 why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the 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 I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly 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 so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is 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 gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected。they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally。if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless。哈佛給予我的不僅僅是無上的榮譽(yù)，還有連日來因?yàn)橐幌氲竭@個(gè)演講，帶來的恐懼以及恐懼導(dǎo)致的陣陣惡心讓我減肥成功?，F(xiàn)在我要做的就是深呼吸，瞇著眼睛看著眼前的大紅橫幅，安慰自己只是在世界上最大的矮人大會(huì)上。那天做報(bào)告的是英國著名的哲學(xué)家Baroness Mary Warnock，通過對(duì)她的演講的回憶對(duì)我寫今天的演講稿給予了極大地幫助。我可能會(huì)無意中影響你，放棄在商業(yè)、法律或政治等有前途的職業(yè)而為眩暈的愉悅成為一個(gè)快樂的魔法師?？鞓返哪Х◣?9?？蓪?shí)現(xiàn)的目標(biāo)：個(gè)人提高的第一步。我曾問自己：我從畢業(yè)到現(xiàn)在的這些年里，學(xué)到和了解了什么重要的教訓(xùn)。在這個(gè)美好的一天，當(dāng)我們正聚集在一起慶祝您畢業(yè)的時(shí)刻，我已決定與你們談?wù)勈〉暮锰?；另一方面，你們站?9。的門檻上，我要歌頌至關(guān)重要的想象力。讓一個(gè)已經(jīng)42歲的人回顧在她21歲畢業(yè)時(shí)情景，是個(gè)讓人有點(diǎn)不舒服的經(jīng)歷。我一直深信我唯一想做的事寫小說。他們都堅(jiān)持認(rèn)為我過度的想象力是一個(gè)令人驚訝的個(gè)人怪癖，絕不可支付按揭或保證安穩(wěn)的退休金?？晌蚁雽W(xué)習(xí)英語文學(xué)。幾乎剛把車停在路盡頭的墻角（譯者加指去校報(bào)道），我放棄了德語并逃到古典文學(xué)的殿堂。也許他們很可能在我畢業(yè)那天才第一次發(fā)現(xiàn)我的專業(yè)是什么。我想澄清一下：我不會(huì)因?yàn)樗麄兊挠^點(diǎn)而責(zé)怪我的父母。當(dāng)你長到自己可以掌握方向時(shí)，你就要自己承擔(dān)責(zé)任了。他們是貧窮的，我也一直很貧窮。用您自己的努力擺脫貧困這確實(shí)是一件對(duì)自己而言驕傲的事情。我在你們這個(gè)年齡時(shí)，最害怕的不是貧窮，而是失敗。我花了太久在咖啡吧寫故事，而在課堂的時(shí)間就很少了。我不愚蠢假設(shè)因?yàn)槟銈兊哪贻p，天才和受過良好教育就從來沒有困難或心碎的時(shí)刻。我也不會(huì)假設(shè)大家都坐這里冷靜地滿足于自身的優(yōu)越感。害怕失敗像渴望成功一樣強(qiáng)烈。因?yàn)槟銈円呀?jīng)站在如此之高的位置。因而我可以公平地講，從任何傳統(tǒng)的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)看，在我畢業(yè)僅僅七年后的日子里，我的失敗就達(dá)到了空前的規(guī)模：一個(gè)異常短暫的破裂的婚姻、失業(yè)、一個(gè)單親家長，像在現(xiàn)代英國的窮人一樣，只是還沒有到無家可歸的地步罷了。按照慣常的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來看，我是我所見過的最大