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.

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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.

我们在这个美好的日子里相聚在一起，庆祝你们在学业上获得成功，而我决定跟你们谈谈失败的好处。

回首我21岁毕业那年，我唯一想做的事情就是写小说。但是，我的父母出身贫寒，没有接受过大学教育。他们认为，我那些不安分的想象力只是一种可笑的怪癖，根本不能用来还房贷，或者挣来养老金。

他们希望我再去读个专业学位，而我想去攻读英国文学。最后，我们达成了一个双方都不甚满意的妥协：我改学德语。可是父母的车刚驶过路尽头的拐角，我便立刻放弃德语，报名学习古典文学。

我要申明，我并不责怪父母。他们只是希望我不要过穷日子，我不能批评他们。他们自己很穷，我后来一度也很穷。所以，我也认同他们的观点，贫穷是一种悲惨的经历。

贫穷会带来恐惧、压力，有时还有抑郁。它意味着许许多多的羞辱和艰辛。靠自己的努力摆脱贫穷，确实让人自豪，但是只有傻瓜才会将贫穷本身浪漫化。

在你们这个年龄的时候，我最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。

然而，你们是哈佛毕业生的这个事实，说明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很成功了。

我并不是想站在这里告诉你们，失败是多么有趣。为什么我说失败是有好处的？就因为失败将那些非本质的东西都剥离了。我不再伪装自己，我找到了真正的我。我将自己所有的精力投入到完成对我最重要的唯一一项工作中去。……