president first
members of The Hobbit corporation
and the border fences members of the faculty
proud parents and a buffalo
graduates the first thing I would like to say
is thank you not earnings hoffa
given me an extraordinary honor but the week's
fear and nausea I haven't yet 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 screen to the right balance
and convince myself and I that I am
the world's largest orphaned or union the
delivering the commencement address
is a great responsibility so I thought
until I cast my mind back to my own graduation
the commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher
Arun s Mary gonna reflecting on her speech
has helped me enormously in writing this one because it turns out that I can't
remember single what she said
this liberating discovery enables me to press
without any fear that I might
inadvertently influence you
to abandon promising careers in business the law politics
for the kitty delights of the coming okay with it
the
you see if only remember in years to come is the game which is Joe
I come out ahead baroness marry
the achievable goals
the first step to self-improvement
actually I have tracked
my mind and heart what I want to say to you today
I've asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation
and most important lessons I have learned
in the 21 years expired between that day after this
I have come up with two outs this on this wonderful day
when we have gathered together to celebrate your academic success
I have decided to talk to you about the benefits a failure
and as you stand on the threshold
40 sometimes called real-life I want to extol the crucial importance
%uh imagination this may seem quixotic a 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
she has become of my lifetime ago
I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition i have for myself and what
those closest
to me expected of me I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do
ever was 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
quote: that would never pay a mortgage
secure pension I know the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon until 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 have my parents car around the corner at the end of the road
the night ditched German scuttled off down the classics card
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying classics
they might well 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 in Greek mythology
when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom
not I would like to make it clear
in parenthesis that I do not blame my parents for that point-of-view
there is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering
in the wrong direction the
the moment you are old enough to take the wheel
responsibility lies with you what a small
I cannot criticize my parents were hoping that I would never experienced
poverty
they had been call themselves and I have since been call
and I quiting agree with them that it is not
and then opening experience poverty
entails fear and stress and sometimes depression
it needs a thousand petty humiliations and hardships
climbing out to poverty by your own efforts
that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself
is romanticized only buy phones what I feared most for myself
your age was not poverty failure
at your age in spite of a distinct lack of motivation
University where I had spent far too long in the coffee by writing stories
and far too little time lectures I had a knack for passing examinations
and fat for years had been the measure of success
in my life and that of my peers now
I'm not dumb enough to suppose that because you are young
gifted well-educated you have never show no
heartbreak hardship haha take
talent and intelligence never get inoculated
anyone the gates the Caprice to face and I do not for a moment suppose
everyone here has enjoyed an existence unruffled
privilege and contentment however
the fact that you a graduating from Harvard
suggests that you are not very well acquainted with failure
you might be driven by fear of failure
quite as much as a desire for success indeed
your conception Fadia might not be far removed from the average person's idea
success
so high
have you already flown ultimately
we'll have to decide for ourselves what constitutes
that the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it
so I think it's fair to say that by any conventional measures missed seven years
after my graduation day
I had failed on an epic scale an exception the short-lived marriage had
imploded
and I was jobless lone parent
and discourse it is possible to be in modern Britain
without being homeless the fears that my parents have had for me
and that I had happened myself had both
come to pass and by every usual standard
I was the biggest failure I knew now I'm not going to stand here and tell you
that
it's fun that period my life is a dark one
and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has said
states represented as a kind a fairy tale resolution
I have no idea then how far the tunnel extended
and for a long time any light at the end of it was a hug rather than a reality
so why do I tool about the benefits
Fadia simply because fayed yet
men to stripping away in essential I stopped pretending to myself that I was
anything
other than what I loss and began to direct all my energy
into finishing the only work matter to me had i really succeeded anything else
I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one
arena
for I believed I truly belonged I will sit
free because my greatest fear been realized 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 a solid foundation
which I rebuilt my life you might never fail
on the scale I did some failure in life
is inevitable it is impossible
today without failing at something unless you live so
cautiously you might as well not lift at all
in which case you failed by default
failure taking in a security that I've never attained by passing examinations
failure taught me things about myself that I could have learnt
no other way I discovered that I had a strong will
and more discipline than I have suspected I also found out
but I have friends whose value was truly about the prices through this
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 all the strength of your relationships
until both have been testified for city such knowledge
is a true gift for all that it is painfully 1
and it has been worth more than any qualification
I ever so given a Time Turner
i would tell my 21 year old self personal happiness lies
in knowing that mike is not a checklist acquisition or achievement
your qualifications your CP
I'm not your life you will meet many people at my age and older
to 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
it's the city's now you might think that I chose my second seen the importance of
imagination because of the particulate
in rebuilding my life but that is not wholly so
though I personally will defend the father
bedtime stories to my last class I have learned to value imagination
in a much broader sense imagination
is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision backed which is not
and therefore found all invention
and innovation in its arguably most transformative
and revel 83 capacity it is the power that enables us
to empathize with humans experiences we have never shed
one of the greatest formative experiences of my life percy
Harry Potter which informed much by subsequent
books this revelation came in the form of one my estate jobs
know I was looking up to write stories during my lunch hours
I paid the rent in my early 20's by working
at the African research department Amnesty International's headquarters
in London there in my little office
I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled
out totalitarian regimes by men and women who are risking imprisonment
to inform the outside world what was happening to them
I saw photographs those who disappeared without trace
sent to amnesty by the desperate families and friends
I read the testimony torture victims and still pictures
injuries I opened hand-written
I witness accounts summary trials and executions
kidnappings and rapes
many of my coworkers were ecstatic a prisoner's people could be
to be displaced from their homes or fled into exile
because they have the temerity to speak thinks that governments
visitors to our office is included those for who had come to give information
or to try and find out what 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 to do that in his homeland
he trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera
about their brutality inflicted upon him
he was a foot taller than i close and seem to scratch I'll
as a child I was given the job school to 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'm I should remember walking along an empty cart
and suddenly hearing from behind a closed door
a screen pain and horror such as I have never heard since
the door opened and researcher hotel to
out ahead and told me to run and make a hot drink
for the young man sitting with her
she had just had to keep in the news that in retaliation for his
outspokenness
thinks his country's regime his mother
have been seized and executed
every day of my working week in my early 20's
I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was
to live in a country with a democratically elected government
when legal representation and a public trial
but the rights everyone everyday
I saw more evidence about the evils humankind's would inflict on their
fellow humans
to gain or maintain power
I began to have nightmares literal nightmares
about some of the things I saw hurt
and red and yet
I also learnt more about human goodness
at Amnesty International when I had Evan before
amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or
imprisoned for their beliefs
to act on behalf of those who have
the power human empathy leading to collective action
saves lives and freeze prisoner's
ordinary people whose personal well-being and security are assured
join together in huge numbers to say people they do not know
I'm never meet my small participation
in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences
my life unlike
any other creature on this planet human beings
can learn and understand without having experience
they can think to themselves into other people's places
of course this is a power like Mike Brown to fictional magic
it is morally neutral one might use such inability
to manipulate or control just as much
has to understand sympathize
and many prefer not to exercise their imaginations
at all they choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own
experience
never traveling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they
are
they can refuse to hear screams appearance I 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 enter people who couldn't live that way
except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares tonight
choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a former mental acrophobia
and that brings its own terrace I think the willfully
an imaginative see more monsters
they are often more freight
what is more those who choose not to empathize
enable real monsters for without ever committing an act
outright evil ourselves we collude with it
through our own apathy
one of the many things I didn't the Interfax classics car it all down which
I pictured at the age of eighty
in search of something I could not then define was this
written by the Greek of the few talk what we achieve inwardly
will change out to reality
that is an astonishing statement and get proven a thousand times
every day of our lives it expresses in part
our in a stable connection with the outside world
the fact that we touch other people's life simply by existing
but how much more are you harvard graduate
2008 likely to touch other people's lives
your intelligence your capacity for hard work
education you have and and received
if you unique 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 felt 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
Angela Byrd 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 power less if you retain the ability to imagine yourself
into the lives those who do not have your advantages
then it will not only be you're proud families who celebrate your existence
thousands and millions of people this reality
you have helped change we do not need magic
to transform our world we carry all the power we need inside ourselves
already we have the power to imagine better
I made finished I have one last hope for you
which is something that I already have 21
the friends with whom i sat on graduation day happy my friends for life
they are my children's cough parents the people to whom I've been able to turn in
times of real trouble
people have been kind enough not to see me when I to finance the Death Eaters
at our graduation
we were bound by enormous affection by our shared experiences a time
never coming and of course by the knowledge that we help certain
photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable
if any of this round prime minister
so today I wish you nothing better
and similar friendships and tomorrow
I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine
you remember those senator another of those old Roman Sinemet
when I fled down the classics cards in retreat from Pier
from Korea lattice in search ancient wisdom
as is a tale so is life
not how long it is but how good it is
is what matters I wish she will very good lives
thank you very much