每天读一点英文 那些激励我前行的身影 21 失败的好处和想象的重要性-JK.罗琳

哈利·波特的缔造者J·K·罗琳：失败的好处和想象的重要性

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.

我那时深信，自己唯一、并且永远想做的事只有写小说。但是，我出身贫穷没有上过大学的父母却拥有另外的想法。他们当时认为我非凡的想象力仅仅是滑稽的个人怪癖而已，而这并不能用来抵押贷款或确保一份养老金。

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 Modern Languages. 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.

他们希望我能取得一个可获得稳定职业的学位，而我却想读英语文学。妥协的结果其实让我们都不满意，我将选择现代语言学。但最后报名的时候，还没等父母的汽车转过道路尽头的拐角，我就放弃德语，急速奔入了通往古典文学殿堂的走廊。

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 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 bathroom.

我不曾记得告诉过他们自己正在研习古典，也许在毕业那天他们才真正发现。在这个星球上的所有课程中，他们应该很难再找到比希腊神学更没用的课程了，它根本不可能用来取得一把进入一间宽敞舒适卫生间的钥匙。

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 to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.

这里需要澄清的是，我并不责怪我的父母。因为埋怨他们指错方向的时候已经过了，这时的你们已经成熟到能够自己驾驭人生的方向盘，责任需自负。我还想说，我不能因为自己希望永不经历贫穷而现实并非如此就怨恨父母。

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 stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.

他们自身贫穷，我也因此而贫穷，而贫穷并非是可以拿来显示自己高尚、受人尊崇的经历，对于他们的这种观点我也坚决支持。贫穷带来的是恐惧、压力，有时甚至是沮丧。它意味着数不尽的琐碎羞辱和辛酸。当然，依靠自己的力量从中爬出来确实值得自豪和骄傲，尽管如此，只有傻瓜才会认为贫穷本身是浪漫的。

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.

在你们这么大的时候，我最害怕的并不是贫穷，而是失败。

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.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 peers.

尽管当时我明显匮乏在学校念书的劲头，因为很少去听课，而大部分时间里我是在咖啡吧写故事中度过的，但我明白顺利通过考试的诀窍。而考试，很多年来一直是衡量我及同龄人人生成败的标志。

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.

我不会无趣地猜想，你们因为年轻，有才华，并受到了良好的教育，就应该一直不知道什么是辛酸、困苦、心碎。才华和智力还从未使任何人免于遭受命运反复无常的折磨，并且我一刻也不认为这里的每一个人都已经拥有不遭受这种困扰的特权，而生活在由此带来的满足之中。

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 person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

然而，你们能从哈佛毕业已经说明你们对失败还并不熟悉。恐惧失败对你们的激励作用可能并不亚于渴望成功对你们的鼓舞。事实上，你们对于失败的概念可能离普通人认为的成功差不了多远，你们已经在学术上已经站得相当高了。

Ultimately, 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 it. So I think it fair to say that by anyconventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

最终，我们都不得不为自己决定，是什么组成了失败。而如果你愿意，这个世界会相当热心地提供一组评价准则。所以我想，依照任何传统的准则，在我毕业日的仅仅 7年之后，可以说，我经历了一次史诗般的失败。一段异常短暂的婚姻结束了，我失业并成了单身母亲，并且在现代英国，除了没有无家可归之外，要多穷又多穷。那时，父母对我的担心，我对自己的恐惧都汇聚于一处。而且，我那时知道，用任何通常的标准来看，我是最大的失败。

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That 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 resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

现在，我站在这里并非将要告诉你们失败是有趣的。我生命的那段时期是灰暗的，并且我没有料到，就像媒体所描述的那样，会有一种神话故事般的解决方案。我更不知道这段灰暗的隧道究竟还有多长。在很长的一段时间里，任何闪现出的光芒都只是希望而非现实。

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.

那我为什么还要谈失败的收益呢?很简单，失败意味着放弃生命中不必要的东西。我停止追求那些虚幻的自我，并开始把所有的精力都放在唯一对我重要的工作上。假如真的在其他任何方面成功过，我也许就永远不会获得在真正属于我的舞台上去成功的决心。

Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already 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 idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

我又重获自由，因为生命中最大的忧虑已成现实，而我还活着，依然拥有一个可爱的女儿，一台旧打字机和一个大创意。底部的岩石倒成了坚固的基础，我得以在此之上重建人生。

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It 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 default.

你们可能永远不会如此失败，但人生中不可避免会经历失败。活着而从不失败是不可能的，除非生活得过于谨慎，以至于可能就跟从未真正生活过一样，这种情况下，你就会因预设人生而失败。

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. 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.

失败给了我一种内在的安全感，这是因顺利通过考试从未获得过的。失败使我了解自己，这是无法从其他途径学到的。我发现自己拥有坚强的意志，比预想中更好的自制力，还发现拥有价值真正远在红宝石之上的朋友。

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.

底部的岩石倒成了坚固的基础，我得以在此之上重建人生。从挫折中得到的知识使你更加聪明和强大，这些是你们生存能力的保证。你们不会真正认识自己，也不会知道你们之间的关系到底如何，除非你们共同经历逆境的检验。这才是实在的礼物，经历痛苦后获得的宝贵知识。而这比任何我取得的资格证书对我的意义要重大的多。

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

若有时光机器或时间转换器，我会告诉21岁时的我，个人的幸福在于认识到生活并非是一张罗列着学识和成就的清单。你们的资力，你们的履历，并非你们的生活，虽然你们会遇见和我同岁或年长的人将二者混淆。生活是艰辛的、复杂的，并完全超越所有人的控制，谦逊地认识到这些会使你们经受住生活的沉浮(荣辱兴衰)。

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so.

你们也许认为，我选择想象的重要性作为第二个演讲主题，是因为它在重筑我的人生中所起的重要作用，但并不完全如此。

Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

虽然我个人会坚决支持睡前故事的重要价值，但是我已学着从更广泛的意义来理解想象。想象力不仅是人类设想不存在事物的独特能力，从而成为一切发明和创新的源泉。从想象力是当之无愧最具改革和启示能力这点来看，它赋予我们认同和理解这样一些人的力量，他们的经历(的处境、感情和动机)我们从未知晓。

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.

这种启示源自我最早从事的一些工作。这也是我最重要的一份生活经历，它超越了哈里波特，当然也提供了许多我后来写进这些书里的元素。虽然我会在午饭时间溜出来写小说，但我需要在总部设在伦敦的Amnesty国际非洲研究部工作，以此来支付二十几岁时的房租。

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

在狭小的办公室里，我读着男人或女人冒囹圄之险从专*政政*权“走私”出的字迹潦草的书信，他们以此将正在他们身上发生的惨剧告诉外面的世界。我看到消失得无影无踪的人的照片被他们绝望的家人送来。我读着经历酷刑的受害者的证词，看到记录那些伤痕的照片。我打开手写的目击者对审讯和处决的摘要记录，以及对绑架和QJ的描述。

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

我的许多同事以前都是政治Fan，他们因为对自己政府的独到见解而被驱赶出家园或流放逃亡。我们办公室的来访者包括来递送信息的，和想要弄清楚在那些被迫落下队伍者身上究竟发生了什么的人。

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

我应该永远不会忘记那个非洲酷刑受害者。一个当时和我年龄相仿的年轻男子。在经历家乡对自己灵和肉的所有折磨后，他患上了精神上的疾病。他失控地颤抖着对录影机讲述施加在他身上的残忍暴行。这个比我还高一英尺的男子脆弱得就像个孩子。后来，当我负责把他护送回地铁站时，这个生活因暴行而支离破碎的男子优雅而谦逊地跟我握手道别，并祝福我拥有幸福的未来。

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

而只要我还活着，就还记得，经过那空荡走廊时突然听见后面关着的门里传来的痛苦尖叫和恐惧，就像我从未听过似的。门开了，一个研究人员探出头来叫我赶快给和她坐在一起的男子弄杯温热饮料。她刚刚告诉这个男子，为报复他对自己国家政*府的直言不讳，她的母亲已经被逮捕并随即处决了。

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

在我20多岁工作的每一天，都会感到自己是多么的幸运，能够生活在一个民主选举产生政府的国度，在这里，合法的演说和公开庭审是每一个人的权利。

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

一天天的工作，我看到更多邪恶的人类为了拥有和强化权力是同为人类的其他人经历痛苦的证据。我开始因为这些我看到的、听到的、读到的而作噩梦，文字的梦魇。

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

同时，我也从Amnesty国际学到了更多以前从不知晓的关于人类的善良。

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have.

Amnesty国际组织了数千位没有因信仰问题而被折磨和入狱的人们去代表经历过这些的人们采取行动。

The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

人类强大的移情能力化做了凝聚的力量去拯救生命，化解冤狱。平凡的人们，在他们个人的幸福和安全无忧的情况下，却人数众多地聚集起来去拯救素昧平生并永远不会相间的人。我在这个过程中的小小参与是我生命中最谦卑和振奋人心的经历之一。

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves

into other people's places.

和这个星球其他生物不同，人类能够不去经历就学习和理解。他们能够设身处地，能够想他们之所想。

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

这当然是一种力量，就如同我虚构的魔法，在道德上是中立的。一个人可以运用这种能力去操纵或控制，同样也可以去理解和同情。

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

而许多人根本不乐意去训练他们的想象力。他们选择继续舒适地呆在自己的经历范围之内，从不愿麻烦地去触碰这样的好奇或疑问：如果我出生在另外的世界，如果我并不是现在的自己，那会怎么样呢?他们可以拒绝听到尖叫或注视牢笼;他们可以面对任何不触及自身利益的苦难时紧闭思维和心灵的大门;他们可以拒绝知道。

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of

mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

我可能会被诱惑而去羡慕可以这样生活的人，但我并不认为他们的噩梦会比我少。选择生活在一个狭小的空间会导致精神上的空旷症，并因此带来恐怖。我认为意志性想象力匮乏者看到的只是更多的怪物。他们常常更容易感到害怕。

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

更糟的情况，那些不愿尝试体验他人经历的人可能会唤醒真正的怪物。虽然从未直接犯下最恶，但却以冷漠在串谋。

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the

Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

在我18岁古典殿堂的探险中，在寻找一些我无法在当时定义的东西时，我学到了很多，其中之一正是希腊作家普卢塔克所说的：我们对内在修养的追求将会改变外在现实。

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we

touch other people's lives simply by existing.

这是一个令人惊讶的论断，但在我们生命的每一天都会被证明一千次。他是说，在一定程度上，我们与外部世界存在着不可逃避的联系，我们仅仅通过简单的存在就可触及别人的生命。

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and

received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way

you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

但是你们，作为2008届的哈佛毕业生，在多大程度上愿意去感受别人的生命呢?你们应对艰难工程的智慧和能力，你们赢得和接受的教育赋予你们独特的地位和独一无二的责任。甚至你们的国籍也使你们与众不同。你们中的绝大多数属于这个世界剩下的唯一超级大国。你们的投票方式、生活方式、抗议的方式，你们施加于政府的压力，这些都会产生超越国界的影响。这是你们的特权，也是你们的责任。

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, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

如果你们选择利用你们的地位和影响来为无法发出声音的人群呐喊;如果你们选择不仅平等看待有权的强势群体，也平等看待无权的弱势群体;如果你们不放弃你们的能力，去想象那些没有你们这些优势的人群的生活;那么不仅是你们自豪的家庭为你们的存在而欢庆，更是那些你们帮助数以千万计的人改变现实而生活得更好。我们不需要魔法来改变世界，我们已经在内心拥有足够的力量：我们拥有想象得更好的力量。

【人物简介】

乔安妮·凯瑟琳·罗琳，生于英国的格温特郡的Chipping Sodbury普通医院。毕业于英国埃克塞特大学，学习法语和古典文学，获文理学士学位。2000年，被母校授予荣誉文学博士学位。毕业后曾在英国曼彻斯特接受教学培训。