[00:08] [Applause]
[00:25] President F,
[00:27] members of the Harvard Corporation and
[00:29] the board of overseers,
[00:31] members of the faculty, proud parents,
[00:35] and above all graduates.
[00:38] The first thing I would like to say is
[00:40] thank you. Not only has Harvard given me
[00:43] an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of
[00:46] fear and nausea I have endured
[00:52] at the thought of giving this
[00:53] commencement address have made me lose
[00:56] weight.
[01:01] A win-win situation.
[01:05] Now all I have to do is take deep
[01:07] breaths, squint at the red banners,
[01:10] and convince myself that that I am at
[01:12] the world's largest Gryffindor reunion.
[01:25] Delivering a commencement address is a
[01:27] great responsibility.
[01:29] Or so I thought until I cast my mind
[01:32] back to my own graduation.
[01:35] The commencement speaker that day was
[01:37] the distinguished British philosopher
[01:39] Baroness Mary Warick.
[01:42] Reflecting on her speech has helped me
[01:44] enormously in writing this one because
[01:47] it turns out that I can't remember a
[01:49] single word she said.
[01:57] This liberating discovery enables me to
[02:00] proceed
[02:03] without any fear that I might
[02:05] inadvertently influence you
[02:09] to abandon promising careers in
[02:11] business, the law, or politics for the
[02:13] giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
[02:27] You see, if all you remember in years to
[02:30] come is the gay wizard joke, I've come
[02:32] out ahead of Baroness Mary Warner.
[02:39] Achievable goals, the first step to
[02:42] self-improvement.
[02:46] Actually, I have wrapped my mind and
[02:49] heart for what I ought to say to you
[02:50] today. I have asked myself what I wish I
[02:54] had known at my own graduation
[02:56] and what important lessons I have
[02:58] learned in the 21 years that have
[03:01] expired between that day and this.
[03:04] I have come up with two answers.
[03:07] On this wonderful day when we are
[03:08] gathered together to celebrate your
[03:10] academic success, I have decided to talk
[03:13] to you about the benefits of failure.
[03:17] And as you stand on the threshold of
[03:19] what is sometimes called real life, I
[03:22] want to extol the crucial importance of
[03:25] imagination.
[03:27] These may seem quickotic or paradoxical
[03:29] choices, but bear with me.
[03:33] Looking back at the 21-year-old that I
[03:35] was at graduation is a slightly
[03:37] uncomfortable experience for the
[03:39] 42year-old that she has become.
[03:42] Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an
[03:45] uneasy balance between the ambition I
[03:47] had for myself and what those closest of
[03:50] to me expected of me.
[03:53] I was convinced that the only thing I
[03:55] wanted to do ever was write novels.
[03:59] However, my parents, both of whom came
[04:01] from impoverished backgrounds and
[04:03] neither of whom had been to college,
[04:05] took the view that my overactive
[04:07] imagination was an amusing personal
[04:09] quirk that would never pay a mortgage or
[04:12] secure a pension.
[04:14] I know the irony strikes with the force
[04:16] of a cartoon anvil now, but
[04:20] so they hoped that I would take a
[04:22] vocational degree. I wanted to study
[04:25] English literature. A compromise was
[04:27] reached that in retrospect satisfied
[04:29] nobody and I went up to study modern
[04:32] languages.
[04:34] Hardly had my parents' car round of the
[04:36] corner at the end of the road. Then I
[04:38] ditched German and scuttled off down the
[04:40] classics corridor.
[04:43] I cannot remember telling my parents
[04:45] that I was studying classics. They might
[04:47] well have found out for the first time
[04:49] on graduation day.
[04:52] Of all the subjects on this planet, I
[04:54] think they would have been hardput to
[04:57] name one less useful than Greek
[04:59] mythology when it came to securing the
[05:01] keys to an executive bathroom.
[05:05] Now, I would like to make it clear in
[05:07] parenthesis that I do not blame my
[05:09] parents for their point of view. There
[05:12] is an expiry date on blaming your
[05:14] parents for steering you in the wrong
[05:15] direction.
[05:26] The moment you are old enough to take
[05:28] the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
[05:32] What is more, I cannot criticize my
[05:35] parents for hoping that I would never
[05:37] experience poverty. They had been poor
[05:40] themselves and I have since been poor.
[05:43] And I quite agree with them that it is
[05:45] not an enabling experience.
[05:48] Poverty entails fear and stress and
[05:52] sometimes depression. It means a
[05:54] thousand petty humiliations and
[05:56] hardships.
[05:58] Climbing out of poverty by your own
[06:00] efforts, that is something on which to
[06:02] pride yourself. But poverty itself is
[06:05] romanticized only by fools.
[06:09] What I feared most for myself at your
[06:11] age was not poverty, but failure.
[06:15] At your age, in spite of a distinct lack
[06:18] of motivation at university, where I had
[06:20] spent far too long in the coffee bar
[06:22] writing stories and far too little time
[06:25] at lectures, I had a knack for passing
[06:28] examinations.
[06:29] And that for years had been the measure
[06:32] of success in my life and that of my
[06:34] peers.
[06:36] Now I am not dull enough to suppose that
[06:39] because you are young, gifted and well
[06:41] educated, you have never known
[06:44] heartbreak,
[06:45] hardship or heartache, talent and
[06:48] intelligence never yet inoculated anyone
[06:52] against the caprice of the fates and I
[06:54] do not for a moment suppose that
[06:56] everyone here has enjoyed an existence
[06:58] of unruffled privilege and contentment.
[07:02] However, the fact that you are
[07:05] graduating from Harvard suggests that
[07:07] you are not very well acquainted with
[07:09] failure.
[07:12] You might be driven by a fear of failure
[07:15] quite as much as a desire for success.
[07:18] Indeed, your conception of failure might
[07:21] not be too far removed from the average
[07:23] person's idea of success. So, high have
[07:27] you already flown.
[07:30] Ultimately, we all have to decide for
[07:33] ourselves what constitutes failure. But
[07:36] the world is quite eager to give you a
[07:38] set of criteria if you let it. So I
[07:41] think it fair to say that by any
[07:43] conventional measure, a mere seven years
[07:46] after my graduation day, I had failed on
[07:50] an epic scale.
[07:52] An exceptionally short-lived marriage
[07:54] had imploded and I was jobless, a lone
[07:58] parent and as poor as it is possible to
[08:01] be in modern Britain without being
[08:03] homeless.
[08:05] The fears that my parents had had for me
[08:07] and that I had had for myself had both
[08:10] come to pass. And by every usual
[08:13] standard, I was the biggest failure I
[08:15] knew.
[08:17] Now, I'm not going to stand here and
[08:19] tell you that failure is fun.
[08:21] That period of my life was a dark one
[08:24] and I had no idea that there was going
[08:26] to be what the press has si since
[08:28] represented as a kind of fairy tale
[08:31] resolution.
[08:32] I had no idea then how far the tunnel
[08:35] extended. And for a long time any light
[08:38] at the end of it was a hope rather than
[08:40] a reality.
[08:42] So why do I talk about the benefits of
[08:45] failure?
[08:47] simply because failure meant a stripping
[08:50] away of the inessential.
[08:53] I stopped pretending to myself that I
[08:55] was anything other than what I was and
[08:58] began to direct all my energy into
[09:00] finishing the only work that mattered to
[09:02] me. Had I really succeeded at anything
[09:05] else, I might never have found the
[09:07] determination to succeed in the one
[09:09] arena where I believed I truly belonged.
[09:12] I was set free because my greatest fear
[09:16] had been realized and I was still alive
[09:19] and I still had a daughter whom I adored
[09:21] and I had an old typewriter and a big
[09:24] idea and so rock botton became the solid
[09:28] foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
[09:32] You might never fail on the scale I did
[09:35] but some failure in life is inevitable.
[09:39] It is impossible to live without failing
[09:42] at something unless you live so
[09:44] cautiously that you might as well not
[09:46] have lived at all in which case you fail
[09:50] by default.
[09:52] Failure gave me an inner security that I
[09:54] had never attained by passing
[09:56] examinations.
[09:57] Failure taught me things about myself
[09:59] 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.