ZT: 一個感動千萬人的單親媽媽畢業典禮演講

【資料來自網絡，由Orange88轉載張貼, 謝謝她的無私分享，批準我在這裏再次轉載】

【資料來自網絡，Orange88轉載張貼】

她是世界上最富有的單親媽媽 ：“哈利-波特”的老媽，J.K.羅琳。J.K.羅琳創造了出版史上的神話。她的作品《哈利-波特》係列被譯成60多種文字，在200多個國家和地區累計銷售達3億多冊。她憑借巨額版稅成為世界上最富有的女人之一，資產超過英國女王，達到10億美元。

 從一個困窘的失業單親媽媽到全球知名的暢銷書作家，J-K-羅琳到底有怎樣的魔法？在哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講中，J·K·羅琳分享著自己年輕時的一些經曆，以及她從這段經曆中學到的東西。她的演講題目是《失敗的好處和想象的重要性》（The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination）。

這裏轉載的是J-K-羅琳在哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講視頻，演講稿原文及其中文譯文。歡迎觀賞閱讀。




【中文譯文】

福斯特主席，哈佛公司和監察委員會的各位成員，各位老師、家長、全體畢業生們:

首先請允許我說一聲謝謝。

哈佛不僅給了我無上的榮譽，連日來為這個演講經受的恐懼和緊張，更令我減肥成功。這真是一件雙贏的事情。我現在所要做的隻是深呼吸幾下，眯起眼睛看看前麵的大紅橫幅，想象著自己，正在參加一個世界上最成功的“小矮人”聚會。

發表畢業演說是一個巨大的責任，至少在我回憶自己當年的畢業典禮前是這麽認為的。那天做演講的是英國著名的哲學家Baroness Mary Warnock，對她演講的回憶，對我寫今天的演講稿，產生了極大的幫助，因為我不記得她說過的任何一句話了。這個發現讓我釋然，讓我不再擔心我可能會無意中影響你放棄在商業，法律或政治上的大好前途，轉而醉心於成為一個快樂的魔法師。

你們看，如果在若幹年後你們還記得“快樂的魔法師”這個笑話，那就證明我已經超越了Baroness Mary Warnock。建立可實現的目標——這是提高自我的第一步。

實際上，我為今天應該和大家談些什麽絞盡了腦汁。我問自己什麽是我希望早在畢業典禮上就該了解的，而從那時起到現在的21年間，我又得到了什麽重要的啟示。

我想到了兩個答案。在這美好的一天，當我們一起慶祝你們取得學業成就的時刻，我希望告訴你們失敗有什麽樣的益處；在你們即將邁向“現實生活”的道路之際，我還要褒揚想象力的重要性。

這些似乎是不切實際或自相矛盾的選擇，但請先容我講完。

回顧21歲剛剛畢業時的自己，對於今天42歲的我來說，是一個稍微不太舒服的經曆。可以說，我人生的前一部分，一直掙紮在自己的雄心和身邊的人對我的期望之間。

我一直深信，自己唯一想做的事情，就是寫小說。不過，我的父母，他們都來自貧窮的背景，沒有任何一人上過大學，堅持認為我過度的想象力是一個令人驚訝的個人怪癖，根本不足以讓我支付按揭，或者取得足夠的養老金。

我現在明白反諷就像用卡通鐵砧去打擊你，但...

他們希望我去拿個職業學位，而我想去攻讀英國文學。最後，達成了一個雙方都不甚滿意的妥協：我改學現代語言。可是等到父母一走開，我立刻放棄了德語而報名學習古典文學。

我不記得將這事告訴了父母，他們可能是在我畢業典禮那一天才發現的。我想，在全世界的所有專業中，他們也許認為，不會有比研究希臘神話更沒用的專業了，根本無法換來一間獨立寬敞的衛生間。

我想澄清一下：我不會因為父母的觀點，而責怪他們。埋怨父母給你指錯方向是有一個時間段的。當你成長到可以控製自我方向的時候，你就要自己承擔責任了。尤其是，我不會因為父母希望我不要過窮日子，而責怪他們。他們一直很貧窮，我後來也一度很窮，所以我很理解他們。貧窮並不是一種高貴的經曆，它帶來恐懼、壓力、有時還有絕望，它意味著許許多多的羞辱和艱辛。靠自己的努力擺脫貧窮，確實可以引以自豪，但貧窮本身隻有對傻瓜而言才是浪漫的。

我在你們這個年齡，最害怕的不是貧窮，而是失敗。

我在您們這麽大時，明顯缺乏在大學學習的動力，我花了太久時間在咖啡吧寫故事，而在課堂的時間卻很少。我有一個通過考試的訣竅，並且數年間一直讓我在大學生活和同齡人中不落人後。

我不想愚蠢地假設，因為你們年輕、有天份，並且受過良好的教育，就從來沒有遇到困難或心碎的時刻。擁有才華和智慧，從來不會使人對命運的反複無常有所準備；我也不會假設大家坐在這裏冷靜地滿足於自身的優越感。

相反，你們是哈佛畢業生的這個事實，意味著你們並不很了解失敗。你們也許極其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失敗。說實話，你們眼中的失敗，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，畢竟你們在學業上已經達到很高的高度了。

最終，我們所有人都必須自己決定什麽算作失敗，但如果你願意，世界是相當渴望給你一套標準的。所以我承認命運的公平，從任何傳統的標準看，在我畢業僅僅七年後的日子裏，我的失敗達到了史詩般空前的規模：短命的婚姻閃電般地破裂，我又失業成了一個艱難的單身母親。除了流浪漢，我是當代英國最窮的人之一，真的一無所有。當年父母和我自己對未來的擔憂，現在都變成了現實。按照慣常的標準來看，我也是我所知道的最失敗的人。

現在，我不打算站在這裏告訴你們，失敗是有趣的。那段日子是我生命中的黑暗歲月，我不知道它是否代表童話故事裏需要曆經的磨難，更不知道自己還要在黑暗中走多久。很長一段時間裏，前麵留給我的隻是希望，而不是現實。

那麽為什麽我要談論失敗的好處呢？因為失敗意味著剝離掉那些不必要的東西。我因此不再偽裝自己、遠離自我，而重新開始把所有精力放在對我最重要的事情上。如果不是沒有在其他領域成功過，我可能就不會找到，在一個我確信真正屬於的舞台上取得成功的決心。我獲得了自由，因為最害怕的雖然已經發生了，但我還活著，我仍然有一個我深愛的女兒，我還有一個舊打字機和一個很大的想法。所以困境的穀底，成為我重建生活的堅實基礎。

你們可能永遠沒有達到我經曆的那種失敗程度，但有些失敗，在生活中是不可避免的。生活不可能沒有一點失敗，除非你生活的萬般小心，而那也意味著你沒有真正在生活了。無論怎樣，有些失敗還是注定地要發生。

失敗使我的內心產生一種安全感，這是我從考試中沒有得到過的。失敗讓我看清自己，這也是我通過其他方式無法體會的。我發現，我比自己認為的，要有更強的意誌和決心。我還發現，我擁有比寶石更加珍貴的朋友。

從挫折中獲得智慧、變得堅強，意味著你比以往任何時候都更有能力生存。隻有在逆境來臨的時候，你才會真正認識你自己，了解身邊的人。這種了解是真正的財富，雖然是用痛苦換來的，但比我以前得到的任何資格證書都有用。

如果給我一部時間機器，我會告訴21歲的自己，人的幸福在於知道生活不是一份漂亮的成績單，你的資曆、簡曆，都不是你的生活，雖然你會碰到很多與我同齡或更老一點的人今天依然還在混淆兩者。生活是艱辛的，複雜的，超出任何人的控製能力，而謙恭地了解這一點，將使你曆經滄桑後能夠更好的生存。

對於第二個主題的選擇——想象力的重要性——你們可能會認為是因為它對我重建生活起到了幫助，但事實並非完全如此。雖然我願誓死捍衛睡前要給孩子講故事的價值觀，我對想象力的理解已經有了更廣泛的含義。想象力不僅僅是人類設想還不存在的事物這種獨特的能力，為所有發明和創新提供源泉，它還是人類改造和揭露現實的能力，使我們同情自己不曾經受的他人苦難。

其中一個影響最大的經曆發生在我寫哈利波特之前，為我隨後寫書提供了很多想法。這些想法成形於我早期的工作經曆，在20多歲時，盡管我可以在午餐時間裏悄悄寫故事，可為了付房租，我做的主要工作是在倫敦總部的大赦國際研究部門。

在我的小辦公室，我看到了人們匆匆寫的信件，它們是從極權主義政權被偷送出來的。那些人冒著被監禁的危險，告知外麵的世界他們那裏正在發生的事情。我看到了那些無跡可尋的人的照片，它們是被那些絕望的家人和朋友送來的。我看過拷問受害者的證詞和被害的照片。我打開過手寫的目擊證詞，描述綁架和強奸犯的審判和處決。

我有很多的同事是前政治犯，他們已離開家園流離失所，或逃亡流放，因為他們敢於懷疑政府、獨立思考。來我們辦公室的訪客，包括那些前來提供信息，或想設法知道那些被迫留下的同誌發生了什麽事的人。

我將永遠不會忘記一個非洲酷刑的受害者，一名當時還沒有我大的年輕男子，他因在故鄉的經曆而精神錯亂。在攝像機前講述被殘暴地摧殘的時候，他顫抖失控。他比我高一英尺，卻看上去像一個脆弱的兒童。我被安排隨後護送他到地鐵站，這名生活已被殘酷地打亂的男子，小心翼翼地握著我的手，祝我未來生活幸福。

隻要我活著，我還會記得，在一個空蕩蕩的的走廊，突然從背後的門裏，傳來我從未聽過的痛苦和恐懼的尖叫。門打開了，調查員探出頭請求我，為坐在她旁邊的青年男子，調一杯熱飲料。她剛剛給他的消息是，為了報複他對國家政權的批評，他的母親已經被捕並執行了槍決。

在我20多歲的那段日子，每一天的工作，都在提醒我自己是多麽幸運。生活在一個民選政府的國家，依法申述與公開審理，是所有人的權利。

每一天，我都能看到更多有關惡人的證據，他們為了獲得或維持權力，對自己的同胞犯下暴行。我開始做噩夢，真正意義上的噩夢，全都和我所見所聞有關。

同時在這裏我也了解到更多關於人類的善良，比我以前想象的要多很多。

大赦動員成千上萬沒有因為個人信仰而受到折磨或監禁的人，去為那些遭受這種不幸的人奔走。人類同理心的力量，引發集體行動，拯救生命，解放囚犯。個人的福祉和安全有保證的普通百姓，攜手合作，大量挽救那些他們素不相識，也許永遠不會見麵的人。我用自己微薄的力量參與了這一過程，也獲得了更大的啟發。

不同於在這個星球上任何其他的動物，人類可以學習和理解未曾經曆過的東西。他們可以將心比心、設身處地的理解他人。

當然，這種能力，就像在我虛構的魔法世界裏一樣，在道德上是中立的。一個人可能會利用這種能力去操縱控製，也有人選擇去了解同情。

而很多人選擇不去使用他們的想象力。他們選擇留在自己舒適的世界裏，從來不願花力氣去想想如果生在別處會怎樣。他們可以拒絕去聽別人的尖叫，看一眼囚禁的籠子；他們可以封閉自己的內心，隻要痛苦不觸及個人，他們可以拒絕去了解。

我可能會受到誘惑，去嫉妒那樣生活的人。但我不認為他們做的噩夢會比我更少。選擇生活在狹窄的空間，可以導致不敢麵對開闊的視野，給自己帶來恐懼感。我認為不願展開想像的人會看到更多的怪獸，他們往往更感到更害怕。

更甚的是，那些選擇不去同情的人，可能會激活真正的怪獸。因為盡管自己沒有犯下罪惡，我們卻通過冷漠與之勾結。

我18歲開始從古典文學中汲取許多知識，其中之一當時並不完全理解，那就是希臘作家普魯塔克所說：我們內心獲得的，將改變外在的現實。

那是一個驚人的論斷，在我們生活的每一天裏被無數次證實。它指明我們與外部世界有無法脫離的聯係，我們以自身的存在接觸著他人的生命。

但是，哈佛大學的2008屆畢業生們，你們多少人有可能去觸及他人的生命？你們的智慧，你們努力工作的能力，以及你們所受到的教育，給予你們獨特的地位和責任。甚至你們的國籍也讓你們與眾不同，你們絕大部份人屬於這個世界上唯一的超級大國。你們表決的方式，你們生活的方式，你們抗議的方式，你們給政府帶來的壓力，具有超乎尋常的影響力。這是你們的特權，也是你們的責任。

如果你選擇利用自己的地位和影響，去為那些沒有發言權的人發出聲音；如果你選擇不僅與強者為伍，還會同情幫扶弱者；如果你會設身處地為不如你的人著想，那麽你的存在，將不僅是你家人的驕傲，更是無數因為你的幫助而改變命運的成千上萬人的驕傲。我們不需要改變世界的魔法，我們自己的內心就有這種力量：那就是我們一直在夢想，讓這個世界變得更美好。

我的演講要接近尾聲了。對你們，我有最後一個希望，也是我21歲時就有的。畢業那天坐在我身邊的朋友現在是我終身的摯交，他們是我孩子的教父母，是在我遇到麻煩時願意伸出援手，在我用他們的名字給哈利波特中的“食死徒”起名而不會起訴我的朋友。我們在畢業典禮時坐在了一起，因為我們關係親密，擁有共同的永遠無法再來的經曆，當然，也因為假想要是我們中的任何人競選首相，那照片將是極為寶貴的關係證明。

所以今天我可以給你們的，沒有比擁有知己更好的祝福了。明天，我希望即使你們不記得我說的任何一個字，你們還能記得哲學家塞內加的一句至理明言。我當年沒有順著事業的階梯向上攀爬，轉而與他在古典文學的殿堂相遇，他的古老智慧給了我人生的啟迪：

生活就像故事一樣：不在乎長短，而在於質量，這才是最重要的。

我祝願你們都有美好的生活。

非常感謝大家。

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【英文原稿 Speech Transcript 】

Speech Part I



Speech Part II



Speech Part III

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

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’ve 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, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindors' 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 Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't 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, 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, I've still 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 to 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 has 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 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 bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-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, 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.

I know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but…

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.

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 than 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 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 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 romanticised only by fools.

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.

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 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.

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 any conventional 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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 who they had left behind.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

(The End)