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1、 累的时候，话语竟然成了奢侈品。沉默下来，听到的却是内心的抱怨声。生发出来的是N多的为什么？明知道生活不相信抱怨的，还是抱怨了。明知道公平本就是一个不可逆命题，还使劲儿的钻。六点下班，还要工作到现在才能回家。心疼我爸饿着肚子在路口等我。于他，我连抱怨的勇气都没有。成长代价吗？JK罗琳在哈佛2008毕业典礼上演讲稿President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduate
2、s.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 have 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, squi
3、nt at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the worlds largest Gryffindor reunion.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 Barone
4、ss Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I cant 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
5、, the 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, Ive come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought t
6、o 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 have 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
7、 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 may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me. Looking back at the 21-year-
8、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,
9、 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 would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes wit
10、h the force of a cartoon anvil, now.So they 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 th
11、an 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 the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful th
12、an 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
13、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 stre
14、ss, 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 failu
15、re. 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 peer
16、s.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 failu
