Advertisement
20:59
Transcript
0:08
[Applause]
0:25
President F,
0:27
members of the Harvard Corporation and
0:29
the board of overseers,
0:31
members of the faculty, proud parents,
0:35
and above all graduates.
0:38
The first thing I would like to say is
0:40
thank you. Not only has Harvard given me
Advertisement
0:43
an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of
0:46
fear and nausea I have endured
0:52
at the thought of giving this
0:53
commencement address have made me lose
0:56
weight.
1:01
A win-win situation.
1:05
Now all I have to do is take deep
1:07
breaths, squint at the red banners,
1:10
and convince myself that that I am at
1:12
the world's largest Gryffindor reunion.
Advertisement
1:25
Delivering a commencement address is a
1:27
great responsibility.
1:29
Or so I thought until I cast my mind
1:32
back to my own graduation.
1:35
The commencement speaker that day was
1:37
the distinguished British philosopher
1:39
Baroness Mary Warick.
1:42
Reflecting on her speech has helped me
1:44
enormously in writing this one because
1:47
it turns out that I can't remember a
1:49
single word she said.
1:57
This liberating discovery enables me to
2:00
proceed
2:03
without any fear that I might
2:05
inadvertently influence you
2:09
to abandon promising careers in
2:11
business, the law, or politics for the
2:13
giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
2:27
You see, if all you remember in years to
2:30
come is the gay wizard joke, I've come
2:32
out ahead of Baroness Mary Warner.
2:39
Achievable goals, the first step to
2:42
self-improvement.
2:46
Actually, I have wrapped my mind and
2:49
heart for what I ought to say to you
2:50
today. I have asked myself what I wish I
2:54
had known at my own graduation
2:56
and what important lessons I have
2:58
learned in the 21 years that have
3:01
expired between that day and this.
3:04
I have come up with two answers.
3:07
On this wonderful day when we are
3:08
gathered together to celebrate your
3:10
academic success, I have decided to talk
3:13
to you about the benefits of failure.
3:17
And as you stand on the threshold of
3:19
what is sometimes called real life, I
3:22
want to extol the crucial importance of
3:25
imagination.
3:27
These may seem quickotic or paradoxical
3:29
choices, but bear with me.
3:33
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I
3:35
was at graduation is a slightly
3:37
uncomfortable experience for the
3:39
42year-old that she has become.
3:42
Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an
3:45
uneasy balance between the ambition I
3:47
had for myself and what those closest of
3:50
to me expected of me.
3:53
I was convinced that the only thing I
3:55
wanted to do ever was write novels.
3:59
However, my parents, both of whom came
4:01
from impoverished backgrounds and
4:03
neither of whom had been to college,
4:05
took the view that my overactive
4:07
imagination was an amusing personal
4:09
quirk that would never pay a mortgage or
4:12
secure a pension.
4:14
I know the irony strikes with the force
4:16
of a cartoon anvil now, but
4:20
so they hoped that I would take a
4:22
vocational degree. I wanted to study
4:25
English literature. A compromise was
4:27
reached that in retrospect satisfied
4:29
nobody and I went up to study modern
4:32
languages.
4:34
Hardly had my parents' car round of the
4:36
corner at the end of the road. Then I
4:38
ditched German and scuttled off down the
4:40
classics corridor.
4:43
I cannot remember telling my parents
4:45
that I was studying classics. They might
4:47
well have found out for the first time
4:49
on graduation day.
4:52
Of all the subjects on this planet, I
4:54
think they would have been hardput to
4:57
name one less useful than Greek
4:59
mythology when it came to securing the
5:01
keys to an executive bathroom.
5:05
Now, I would like to make it clear in
5:07
parenthesis that I do not blame my
5:09
parents for their point of view. There
5:12
is an expiry date on blaming your
5:14
parents for steering you in the wrong
5:15
direction.
5:26
The moment you are old enough to take
5:28
the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
5:32
What is more, I cannot criticize my
5:35
parents for hoping that I would never
5:37
experience poverty. They had been poor
5:40
themselves and I have since been poor.
5:43
And I quite agree with them that it is
5:45
not an enabling experience.
5:48
Poverty entails fear and stress and
5:52
sometimes depression. It means a
5:54
thousand petty humiliations and
5:56
hardships.
5:58
Climbing out of poverty by your own
6:00
efforts, that is something on which to
6:02
pride yourself. But poverty itself is
6:05
romanticized only by fools.
6:09
What I feared most for myself at your
6:11
age was not poverty, but failure.
6:15
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack
6:18
of motivation at university, where I had
6:20
spent far too long in the coffee bar
6:22
writing stories and far too little time
6:25
at lectures, I had a knack for passing
6:28
examinations.
6:29
And that for years had been the measure
6:32
of success in my life and that of my
6:34
peers.
6:36
Now I am not dull enough to suppose that
6:39
because you are young, gifted and well
6:41
educated, you have never known
6:44
heartbreak,
6:45
hardship or heartache, talent and
6:48
intelligence never yet inoculated anyone
6:52
against the caprice of the fates and I
6:54
do not for a moment suppose that
6:56
everyone here has enjoyed an existence
6:58
of unruffled privilege and contentment.
7:02
However, the fact that you are
7:05
graduating from Harvard suggests that
7:07
you are not very well acquainted with
7:09
failure.
7:12
You might be driven by a fear of failure
7:15
quite as much as a desire for success.
7:18
Indeed, your conception of failure might
7:21
not be too far removed from the average
7:23
person's idea of success. So, high have
7:27
you already flown.
7:30
Ultimately, we all have to decide for
7:33
ourselves what constitutes failure. But
7:36
the world is quite eager to give you a
7:38
set of criteria if you let it. So I
7:41
think it fair to say that by any
7:43
conventional measure, a mere seven years
7:46
after my graduation day, I had failed on
7:50
an epic scale.
7:52
An exceptionally short-lived marriage
7:54
had imploded and I was jobless, a lone
7:58
parent and as poor as it is possible to
8:01
be in modern Britain without being
8:03
homeless.
8:05
The fears that my parents had had for me
8:07
and that I had had for myself had both
8:10
come to pass. And by every usual
8:13
standard, I was the biggest failure I
8:15
knew.
8:17
Now, I'm not going to stand here and
8:19
tell you that failure is fun.
8:21
That period of my life was a dark one
8:24
and I had no idea that there was going
8:26
to be what the press has si since
8:28
represented as a kind of fairy tale
8:31
resolution.
8:32
I had no idea then how far the tunnel
8:35
extended. And for a long time any light
8:38
at the end of it was a hope rather than
8:40
a reality.
8:42
So why do I talk about the benefits of
8:45
failure?
8:47
simply because failure meant a stripping
8:50
away of the inessential.
8:53
I stopped pretending to myself that I
8:55
was anything other than what I was and
8:58
began to direct all my energy into
9:00
finishing the only work that mattered to
9:02
me. Had I really succeeded at anything
9:05
else, I might never have found the
9:07
determination to succeed in the one
9:09
arena where I believed I truly belonged.
9:12
I was set free because my greatest fear
9:16
had been realized and I was still alive
9:19
and I still had a daughter whom I adored
9:21
and I had an old typewriter and a big
9:24
idea and so rock botton became the solid
9:28
foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
9:32
You might never fail on the scale I did
9:35
but some failure in life is inevitable.
9:39
It is impossible to live without failing
9:42
at something unless you live so
9:44
cautiously that you might as well not
9:46
have lived at all in which case you fail
9:50
by default.
9:52
Failure gave me an inner security that I
9:54
had never attained by passing
9:56
examinations.
9:57
Failure taught me things about myself
9:59
that I could have learned no other way.
10:02
I discovered that I had a strong will
10:04
and more discipline than I had
10:06
suspected. I also found out that I had
10:10
friends whose value was truly above the
10:12
price of rubies.
10:14
The knowledge that you have emerged
10:16
wiser and stronger from setbacks means
10:18
that you are ever after secure in your
10:21
ability to survive.
10:23
You will never truly know yourself or
10:26
the strength of your relationships until
10:28
both have been tested by adversity.
10:31
Such knowledge is a true gift for all
10:35
that it is painfully won and it has been
10:38
worth more than any qualification I ever
10:40
earned.
10:42
So given a time turner, I would tell my
10:45
21-year-old self that personal happiness
10:47
lies in knowing that life is not a
10:49
checklist of acquisition or achievement.
10:52
Your qualifications, your CV, are not
10:56
your life. Though you will meet many
10:58
people of my age and older who confuse
11:00
the two. Life is difficult and
11:03
complicated and beyond anyone's total
11:06
control. And the humility to know that
11:09
will enable you to survive its
11:11
vicissitudes.
11:14
Now you might think that I chose my
11:16
second theme, the importance of
11:17
imagination because of the part it
11:19
played in rebuilding my life, but that
11:21
is not wholly so. Though I personally
11:24
will defend the value of bedtime stories
11:27
to my last gasp, I have leared to value
11:30
imagination in a much broader sense.
11:33
Imagination is not only the uniquely
11:36
human capacity to envision that which is
11:39
not and therefore the f of all invention
11:42
and innovation.
11:44
In its arguably most transformative and
11:47
revelatory capacity, it is the power
11:50
that enables us to empathize with humans
11:53
whose experiences we have never shared.
11:56
One of the greatest formative
11:58
experiences of my life preceded Harry
12:00
Potter, though it informed much of what
12:02
I subsequently wrote in those books.
12:05
This revelation came in the form of one
12:07
of my earliest day jobs. Though I was
12:10
sloping off to write stories during my
12:12
lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early
12:15
20ies by working at the African research
12:18
department of Amnesty International's
12:20
headquarters in London.
12:23
There in my little office, I read
12:26
hastily scribbled letters smuggled out
12:28
of totalitarian regimes by men and women
12:31
who were risking imprisonment to inform
12:34
the outside world of what was happening
12:35
to them. I saw photographs of those who
12:38
had disappeared without trace, sent to
12:41
amnesty by their desperate families and
12:43
friends. I read the testimony of torture
12:46
victims and saw pictures of their
12:48
injuries. I opened handwritten
12:51
eyewitness accounts of summary trials
12:54
and executions of kidnappings and rapes.
12:59
Many of my co-workers were ex-political
13:02
prisoners, people who had been displaced
13:04
from their homes or fled into exile
13:07
because they had the tmerity to speak
13:09
against their governments.
13:11
Visitors to our offices included those
13:13
who have who had come to give
13:15
information or to try and find out what
13:17
had happened to those who they had left
13:18
behind.
13:21
I shall never forget the African torture
13:23
victim, a young man no older than I was
13:26
at the time, who had become mentally ill
13:29
after all he had endured in his
13:31
homeland.
13:33
He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke
13:35
into a video camera about the brutality
13:38
inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller
13:42
than I was and seemed as fragile as a
13:44
child.
13:46
I was given the job of escorting him
13:48
back to the underground station
13:49
afterwards. And this man, whose life had
13:52
been shattered by cruelty, took my hand
13:55
with exquisite courtesy and wished me
13:58
future happiness.
14:01
And as long as I live, I shall remember
14:03
walking along an empty corridor and
14:05
suddenly hearing from behind a closed
14:08
door a scream of pain and horror such as
14:11
I have never heard since. The door
14:14
opened and the researcher poked out her
14:17
out her head and told me to run and make
14:19
a hot drink for the young man sitting
14:22
with her.
14:24
She had just had to give him the news
14:26
that in retaliation for his
14:28
outspokenenness against his country's
14:30
regime, his mother had been seized and
14:34
executed.
14:37
Every day of my working week in my early
14:40
20s, I was reminded how incredibly
14:43
fortunate I was to live in a country
14:45
with a democratically elected
14:46
government, where legal representation
14:49
and a public trial were the rights of
14:51
everyone.
14:53
Every day I saw more evidence about the
14:56
evils humankind would inflict on their
14:59
fellow humans to gain or maintain power.
15:03
I began to have nightmares, literal
15:06
nightmares about some of the things I
15:08
saw, heard, and read.
15:12
And yet, I also learned more about human
15:16
goodness at Amnesty International than I
15:19
had ever known before.
15:22
Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people
15:24
who have never been tortured or
15:26
imprisoned for their beliefs to act on
15:28
behalf of those who have. The power of
15:32
human empathy leading to collective
15:34
action saves lives and frees prisoners.
15:39
Ordinary people whose personal
15:41
well-being and security are assured join
15:44
together in huge numbers to save people
15:47
they do not know and will never meet. My
15:50
small participation in that process was
15:53
one of the most humbling and inspiring
15:55
experiences of my life.
15:59
Unlike any other creature on this
16:00
planet, human beings can learn and
16:03
understand without having experienced.
16:06
They can think themselves into other
16:08
people's places.
16:11
Of course, this is a power like my brand
16:13
of fictional magic that is morally
16:15
neutral. One might use such an ability
16:18
to manipulate or control just as much as
16:22
to understand or sympathize.
16:25
And many prefer not to exercise their
16:27
imaginations at all. They choose to
16:30
remain comfortably within the bounds of
16:32
their own experience, never troubling to
16:34
wonder how it would feel to have been
16:36
born other than they are. They can
16:39
refuse to hear screams or peer inside
16:41
cages. They can close their minds and
16:44
hearts to any suffering that does not
16:46
touch them personally. They can refuse
16:49
to know.
16:52
I might be tempted to envy people who
16:54
can live that way, except that I do not
16:56
think they have any fewer nightmares
16:58
than I do. Choosing to live in narrow
17:01
spaces leads to a form of mental
17:03
agrophobia, and that brings its own
17:06
terrors.
17:08
I think the willfully unimaginative see
17:10
more monsters. They are often more
17:13
afraid.
17:15
What is more, those who choose not to
17:18
empathize enable real monsters. For
17:21
without ever committing an act of
17:23
outright evil ourselves, we collude with
17:25
it through our own apathy.
17:29
One of the many things I learned at the
17:31
end of that classics corridor down which
17:33
I ventured at the age of 18 in search of
17:35
something I could not then define was
17:38
this written by the Greek author
17:39
Plutarch.
17:41
what we achieve inwardly will change
17:44
outer reality.
17:47
That is an astonishing statement and yet
17:49
proven a thousand times every day of our
17:51
lives. It expresses in part our
17:54
inescapable connection with the outside
17:56
world. The fact that we touch other
17:58
people's lives simply by existing.
18:02
But how much more are you, Harvard
18:05
graduates of 2008, likely to touch other
18:08
people's lives?
18:10
Your intelligence, your capacity for
18:13
hard work, the education you have earned
18:15
and received give you unique unique
18:19
status and unique responsibilities.
18:22
Even your nationality sets you apart.
18:26
The great majority of you belong to the
18:28
world's only remaining superpower.
18:31
The way you vote, the way you live, the
18:34
way you protest, the pressure you bring
18:36
to bear on your government has an impact
18:38
way beyond your borders. That is your
18:41
privilege and your burden.
18:45
If you choose to use your status and
18:47
influence to raise your voice on behalf
18:49
of those who have no voice. If you
18:51
choose to identify not only with the
18:54
powerful but with the powerless. If you
18:56
retain the ability to imagine yourself
18:59
into the lives of those who do not have
19:00
your advantages, then it will not only
19:03
be your proud families who celebrate
19:05
your existence, but thousands and
19:08
millions of people whose reality you
19:10
have helped change. We do not need magic
19:13
to transform our world. We carry all the
19:16
power we need inside ourselves already.
19:19
We have the power to imagine better.
19:23
I am nearly finished. I have one last
19:26
hope for you, which is something that I
19:28
already had at 21.
19:31
The friends with whom I sat on
19:32
graduation day have been my friends for
19:34
life. They are my children's godparents.
19:38
The people to whom I've been able to
19:39
turn in times of real trouble. People
19:42
who have been kind enough not to sue me
19:44
when I took their names for Death
19:46
Eaters.
19:55
At our graduation, we were bound by
19:58
enormous affection, by our shared
20:00
experience of a time that could never
20:02
come again. And of course, by the
20:05
knowledge that we held certain
20:06
photographic evidence that would be
20:09
exceptionally valuable
20:11
if any of us ran for prime minister.
20:15
[Applause]
20:16
So today, I wish you nothing better than
20:20
similar friendships.
20:22
And tomorrow I hope that even if you
20:25
remember not a single word of mine, you
20:28
remember those of Senica, another of
20:30
those old Romans I met when I fled down
20:33
the classics corridor in retreat from
20:36
from career ladders in search of ancient
20:39
wisdom.
20:40
As is a tale, so is life. Not how long
20:45
it is, but how good it is is what
20:48
matters. I wish you all very good lives.
20:51
Thank you very much.
— end of transcript —
Advertisement
