The Fringe Benefits of Failure,and the Importance of Imagination

Text as delivered follows.
Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008

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 have 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 Gryffindor 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, the 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 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 have 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 please 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 would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they 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.

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 that 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 then 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 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 the price of 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 than any qualification I ever earned.

So given 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.

Now 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 personally 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 at the African 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 speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those 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 back 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 had to give 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 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 leads 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 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 change. 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, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took 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 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.

哈立波特作家罗琳在哈佛大学的演讲：失败的额外收益与想象力的重要性

2008年 6月5日

版权所有：罗琳

浮士德主席，哈佛公司和监察委员会的各位成员，大学的员工，自豪的父母，以及所有的毕业生们：

首先我想说的是“谢谢你们”。这不仅因为哈佛给了我非比寻常的荣誉，而且为了这几个礼拜以来，由于想到这次毕业典礼演说而产生的恐惧与恶心让我减肥成功。这真是一个双赢的局面！现在我需要做的就是一次深呼吸，眯着眼看着红色的横幅，然后欺骗自己，让自己相信正在参加世界上受到最好教育群体的哈立波特大会。

做毕业典礼演说是一个重大的责任，我的思绪回到了自己的那次毕业典礼。那天的演讲者是一位英国的杰出哲学家 Baroness Marry Warnock. 对她演讲的回忆对我写这篇演讲稿帮助巨大，因为我发现她说的话我居然一个字都没有记住。这个发现让我释然，使我得以继续写完演讲稿，我不用再担心，那种想成为”gay wizard”（harry porter中的魔法大师）的眩晕的愉悦，可能会误导你们放弃在商业、法律、政治领域的大好前途。

你们看，如果你们在若干年后能记住“gay wizard”这个笑话，我就比Barkoness Mary Warnock有进步了。 所以，设定一个可以实现的目标是个人进步的第一步。

实际上，我已经绞尽脑汁、费劲心思去想今天我应该讲什么好。我问自己：我希望在自己毕业那天已经知道的是什么，而又有哪些重要的教训是我从那天开始到现在的21年间学会的。

我想到了两个答案。在今天这个愉快的日子，我们聚在一起庆祝你们学习上的成功时，我决定和你们谈谈失败的收益。另外，当你们如今处于“现实生活”的入口处时，我想向你们颂扬想象力的重要性。

我选择的这两个答案似乎如同堂吉诃德式幻想一样不切实际，或者显得荒谬，但是请容忍我讲下去。

对于我这样一个已经42岁的人来说，回头看自己21岁毕业时的情景，并不是一件舒服的事情。我的前半生之前，我一直在自己内心的追求与最亲近的人对我的要求之间进行不自在的抗争。

我曾确信我自己唯一想做的事情是写小说。但是我的父母都来自贫穷的家庭，都没有上过大学，他们认为我的异常活跃的想象力只是滑稽的个人怪癖，并不能用来付抵押房产，或者确保得到退休金。

他们曾希望我去拿一个职业文凭，而我想读英国文学。最后,我们达成了一个回想起来双方都不甚满意的妥协：我改学现代语言。可是等到父母一走开，我立刻报名学习古典文学了。

我忘了自己是怎么把学古典文学的事情告诉父母的了，他们也可能是在我毕业那天才第一次发现。在这个星球上的所有科目中，我想他们很难再发现一门比希腊神学更没用的课程了。

我想顺带着说明，我并没有因为他们的观点而抱怨他们。现在已经不是抱怨父母引导自己走错方向的时候了，如今的你们已经足够大来决定自己前进的路程，责任要靠自己承担。而且，我也不能批评我的父母，他们是希望我能摆脱贫穷。他们以前遭受了贫穷，我也曾经贫穷过，对于他们认为贫穷并不高尚的观点我也坚决同意。贫穷会引起恐惧、压力，有时候甚至是沮丧。这意味着小心眼、卑微和很多艰难困苦。通过自己的努力摆脱贫穷确实是件很值得自豪的事情，但只有傻瓜才对贫穷本身夸夸其谈。

我在你们这个年龄的时候，最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。

在你们这个年龄，尽管我明显缺少在大学学习的动力，我花了很多时间在咖啡吧写故事，很少去听课，但是我知道通过考试的技巧，当然，这也是好多年来评价我，以及我同龄人是否成功的标准。

我想说，并不是我太迟钝，我觉得你们还不曾知道什么是艰难困苦，或者什么是心碎的感觉，因为你们还年轻，而且天资聪明，受到良好教育。但是天赋和智商还未能使任何人免于命运无常的折磨，我从来不认为这里的每个人已经享有平静的恩典和满足。

然而，你们能从哈佛毕业这个现实表明，你们对失败还不是很熟悉，对于失败的恐惧与对于成功的渴望可能对你们有相同的驱动力。确实，你们对于失败的概念可能与普通人的成功差不了太多。你们在学习这方面已经站得相当高了！

当然，最终我们所有人不得不为自己决定什么是失败的组成元素，但是如果你愿意的话，世界很愿意给你一堆的标准。基于任何一种传统标准，我可以说，仅仅在我毕业7年后，我经历了一次巨大的失败。我突然间结束了一段短暂的婚姻，失去了工作。作为一个单身妈妈，而且在这个现代化的英国，除了不是无家可归，你可以说我有多穷就有多穷。我父母对于我的担心，以及我对自己的担心都成了现实，从任何一个通常的标准来看，这是我知道的最大失败。

现在，我不会站在这里和你们说失败很好玩。我生命的那段时间非常的灰暗，那时我还不知道我的书会被新闻界认为是神话故事的革命，我也不知道这段灰暗的日子要持续多久。那时候的很长一段时间里，任何出现的光芒只是希望而不是现实。

那么我为什么还要谈论失败的收益呢？仅仅是因为失败意味着和非我的脱离，失败后我找到了自我，不再装成另外的形象，我开始把我所有的精力仅仅放在我关心的工作上。如果我在其他方面成功过，我可能就不会具备要求在自己领域内获得成功的决心。我变得自在，因为我已经经历过最大的恐惧。而且我还活着，我有一个值得我自豪的女儿，我有一个陈旧的打字机和很不错的写作灵感。我在失败堆积而成的硬石般的基础上开始重筑我的人生。

你们可能不会经历像我那么大的失败，但生活中面临失败是不可避免的。永远不失败是不可能，除非你活得过于谨慎，这样倒还不如根本就没有在世上生活过，因为你从一开始就失败了。

失败给了我内心的安宁，这种安宁是顺利通过测验考试获得不了的。失败让我认识自己，这些是没法从其他地方学到的。我发现自己有坚强的意志，而且，自我控制能力比自己猜想的还要强，我也发现自己拥有比红宝石更真的朋友。

从挫折中获得的知识越充满智慧、越有力，你在以后的生存中则越安全。除非遭受磨难，你们不会真正认识自己，也没法知道你们之间关系有多铁。这些知识才是真正的礼物，他们比我曾经获得的任何资格证书更为珍贵，因为这些是我经历过痛苦后才获得的。

如果给我一个时间机器，我会告诉21岁的自己，个人的幸福建立在自己能够认识到：生活不是拥有的物品与成就的清单。虽然你们会碰到很多和你们一样大或年长的人分不清楚生活与清单的区别，但你们的资格证书、简历，都不能等价于你们的生活。生活是困难的，也是复杂的，它完全超出任何人的控制，谦虚的认识到这些能使你们在生命的沉浮中得以顺利生存。

你们可能认为我选择想象力作为第二个演讲主题是因为它在重筑我人生的过程中起了作用，但这不是全部原因。虽然我会不遗余力地为床边故事的价值做辩护，但我已学会从更广泛的意义来评价想象力的价值。想象力不仅是一种能促使人类预想不存在事物的独特能力，从而成为所有发明和创新的源泉；从想象力或许是最具改革性和启示作用的能力这点讲，它更是一种能使我们同没有分享过他们经历的人产生共鸣的力量。

我最伟大的生活经历之一发生在写《哈利波特》前，当然我在后来书中写的很多东西与这个经历有关。这个启示来源于我最早期工作之一。我在伦敦的大赦国际总部的研究部门工作，虽然我在中饭的时间逃出来写小说，但我需要这份工作来支付我20多岁时的房租。(注：大赦国际是一个全球性的志愿组织，致力于为释放由于信仰而被监禁的人以及给他们的家庭发放救济等方面的工作。)

在那儿我的狭小的工作室内，我匆忙得读着从各地集权政权内传出来的潦草信件，这些信件是那些冒着进监狱风险而向外传播发生在他们身上惨剧的人偷运出来。我看到了无影无踪就消失的人的相片，这些相片是家里人或朋友送来的。我读着被酷刑折磨的受害者的证据和他们受伤的照片；我打开手写的目击者对审讯和处决的摘要记录，以及对绑架和强奸的叙述。

我的许多同事以前是政治犯人，他们因为勇于不附和政府而独立思考，以致被赶出自己的家，或者被放逐。来拜访我们办公室的人包括那些传递消息的，或者尝试弄清楚那些被迫离开的人身后的真相。

我永远不会忘记那个非洲来的被酷刑折磨的受害者，他是一个和我那时候年龄相仿的年轻男子，但在他家乡经受过的拷打后，他已经有了精神病。当他向录像机讲述强加在他身上的暴行时，他无法控制地发抖。他比我高一英尺，但像一个小孩一样脆弱。后来我的工作是护送他去地下站，这个整个生活被野蛮摧毁的男子礼貌地握着我的手，祝福我一生幸福。

只要我活着，我就能记住我沿着一个空旷的走廊走，突然从后面关闭的一扇门传来我从没听到过的充满痛苦和恐怖的尖叫。门打开了，有个研究人员探出头，让我快点跑去弄点热饮料给坐在她旁边的那个年轻男子。原来，她刚告诉那个男子，为了报复他对他国家的政权做了公开的反对演讲，他的妈妈被抓住、处决了。

在我20多岁时工作的每一天，我提醒我自己我是多么的幸运啊，能生活在一个民主选举产生的政府的国家，在这里合法的陈述和公共审判是每一个人的权利。

每一天，我看到更多的证据，证明邪恶的人类为了获得、维持权力而加害与他们同样的人类。我开始为这些我看到的、听到的、读到的东西做恶梦，是文字恶梦。

然而，我也在大赦国际学到了比我以前知道的更多的人类善良的一面。

大赦国际动员了数千位没有因为信仰问题而被拷问或入狱的人，让他们来代表那些经历过这些的人行动起来。人类的同理心具有能引导集体行动的力量，这种力量能拯救生命，让囚徒获得自由。在这种活动中，那些拥有受到保护的个人福址和安全的普通人聚在了一起，来拯救他们不认识、也永远不会见面的人。我在这个过程中小小的参与是我生命中最卑微，也是最令人振奋的经历之一。

人类和在这个星球上的其他生物不同，人类能够在没有自我经历的情况下学习和理解。他们可以设身处地的思他人所思，想他人所想。

当然，这是一种力量，如同我虚构的魔法，这种力量是道德中立的。有人可能常运用这种能力去操作和控制，就像用于理解和同情一样。

而且，许多人根本不喜欢训练他们的想象力。他们宁愿在自己的经验范围内维持舒适的状态，也不愿麻烦地去思考这样的问题：如果他们不是现在的自己，那么应该是什么感觉呢？他们拒绝听到尖叫，拒绝关注囚牢，他们可以对任何与他们自身无关的苦难关上思维与心灵的大门，他们可以拒绝知道这些。

我可能会羡慕那些以这种方式生活的人，但我不认为他们的噩梦比我少。选择在狭小的空间生活会导致精神上的恐旷症（对于陌生人、事物的恐惧），而且会带来它自身形成的恐怖。我想那些任性固执的缺乏想象力的人会看到更多的怪物，他们常常更容易感到害怕。

甚至于，那些选择不去想他人所想的人可能激活真正的恶魔。因为，虽然我们没有亲手犯下那些昭然若揭的恶行，我们却以冷漠的方式和邪恶在串谋。

十八岁时，为了寻找那时我无法描述的目的，我踏上了古典文学的探险道路；当走到尽头的时候，我学到了很多东西，其中之一就是希腊作家Plutarch的这句话：我们在内心的所得，将改变外界的现实。

我在古典文学的求学之路上学到的，也是我18岁时在那冒险搜寻但不知道怎么定义的重要事情之一就是，如古希腊作家普卢塔克所写的：“我们对内在修养的追求将会改变外在现实。”

这是一个令人惊讶的说法，然而它在我们生命中每一天会被证明一千多次。这句话部分地说明了我们和外部世界不可分离的联系，我们只能通过生命存在来接触别人生命的事实。

但是你们，2008哈佛大学的毕业生们，到底有多么得愿意来感受他人的生命呢？你们对付困难工作的智慧与能力，你们赢得和接受的教育，给了你们独特的地位和责任。甚至你们的国籍也使你们与众不同。你们中的很大一部分人属于这个世界剩下的唯一超级大国（美国）。你们投票、生活、抗议的方式，你们给政府施加的压力，会产生超越国界的影响。那是你们的特权，更是你们的负担。

如果你们选择用你们的地位和影响力来为没法发出声音的人说话；如果你们选择不仅认同有权的强势群体，也认同无权的弱势群体；如果你们保留你们的能力，用来想象那些没有你们这些优势的人的现实生活，那么不仅是你们的家庭为你们的存在而感到自豪，为你们庆祝，而且那些因为你们的帮助而生活得更好的数以千万计的人，会一起来为你们祝贺。我们不需要魔法来改变世界，我们已经在我们的内心拥有了足够的力量：那就是把世界想象成更好的力量。

在我的演说快要结束的时候，我对大家还有最后一个希望，这是我在自己21岁时就明白的道理。毕业那天和我坐在一起的朋友后来成了我终生的朋友。他们是我孩子的教父母；他们是我碰到麻烦时能求助的人；他们是非常友善的，不会为了我以他们的名字给食死徒(书中反面角色)命名而控告我。在我们毕业的时候，我们沉浸在巨大的情感冲击中；我们沉浸于这段永不能重现的共同时光内；当然，如果我们中的某个人将来成为国家首相，我们也沉浸于能拥有极其有价值的相片作为证据的兴奋中。

所以今天，我最希望你们能拥有同样的友情。到了明天，我希望即使你们不记得我说过的任何一个字，但能记住塞内加，我在逃离那个走廊，回想进步的阶梯，寻找古人智慧时碰到的另一个古罗马哲学家，说过的一句话：“生活如同小说，要紧的不是它有多长，而在于它有多好。”

我祝愿你们都有幸福的生活。

谢谢大家。