还是幼童的时候，他吃惯了母亲的一手清淡小菜。每每到了晚饭时候，坐在餐桌前，就有工笔花鸟一般的三菜一汤：玫瑰红腊肉点缀碧绿生青豆苗，水嫩欲滴莴苣配春竹笋的一抹浅白，翠色葱花散落在橘白相间河虾仁之上，还有水墨一般浓浓淡淡晕开的紫菜汤。

那个时候，自然是以母亲的菜式为最好，爽口、无油、少有人间烟火的味道。他依稀记得母亲也是工笔画一般的美人，在厨房里做菜总不许别人进去插手，惟一可见的是窗户上粘着的白纸后面浅浅映出一个侧影的脸，轻轻有些唏嘘。一直到八九岁，在他看来做菜还是十分宁静细密的家事，直至有天父亲带他去了另一个女人家吃饭，他才惊觉，锅碗瓢盆放在一起竟然会那么大声，牛肉羊肉鸡肉鲑鱼积成一堆会这么腥气，父亲和女人不时眉来眼去，相互递筷子勺子，夹杂着咚咚锵锵激烈的剁肉声，做菜原来可以成为多么热闹的一个景象，这都让他大开眼界。

事到如今，那女人的影子已经模糊了，但却还记得那天的饭桌：红酒汁牛排刀叉一下去便从紫酱色肉体中翻滚出蜿蜒的血水，青咖喱羊肉金绿色糊状液体浇在雪白泰国米饭上，芫妥胡椒椰浆柠檬草的刺鼻香味也顺势铺天盖地纠缠到一起，亮橘色熏鲑鱼匍匐在紫苏叶上，只待黑色橄榄和透明洋葱来将其揽入怀中，而一锅子白色浓稠潜伏着银灰色蘑菇和粉嫩鸡肉的奶油鸡蓉蘑菇汤更是让他对自己没见过什么世面的舌头感到无地自容。记忆中的那些食物还都分别用金黄天蓝的奇形怪状盆碗装载，摆满桌子的一瞬间，他竟然觉得这不是进餐时间而是玩乐时间，每一道菜都如同激动人心的大型游乐器械一般，让人有想要尖叫的快感。

盛宴的最后，是名叫提拉米苏的小小乳酪蛋糕，且被刻意做成令人更加愉悦的草莓口味。当他止不住扑进洋溢着咖啡和酒精味道的粉红色世界中时，父亲只问他一句话：“阿姨做的饭好吃还是妈妈做的好吃？”他怔住了，没想到这种事情也能比较。但是对小孩子来说，新鲜的东西具有打败一切的优势，他看似漫不经心地给了父亲一个期许的答案。可后面的每口提拉米苏，他的确都在想心事。那蛋糕吃到接近底部，有很多没有耐心打碎的乳酪颗粒便浮了出来，他专心致志地咬着那些小乳酪渣子，忽然就想起来，母亲在家里拆蟹粉的时候，会用极细的一根银针把蟹脚里的最微型的肉也挑出来，要把深青色的蟹壳琢磨到透，琢磨到空才算完，然后用这些蟹粉去做他最爱吃的扬州蟹粉狮子头，自然也是精心地剁肉，她的力气很小，但她做的狮子头里没有任何一块肉粒是需要咬开才能下肚的。

如果母亲也会做这一道点心，她自然是不会让他吃到那些小渣子的，但母亲是不做任何西菜的。而父亲沉迷了一段牛排以后，仍然回家来吃母亲的三菜一汤。他猜想父亲并不是因为念着这清淡小菜的好才回来的，只是因为买一处米做不了两处饭而已。但他也看不到母亲的改变，饭桌上依然是一个抱怨油料太少，一个坚决不做西菜。只有作为小孩子的他，总结出一个类似名人名言的句子：生活的苍白其实始自饭桌的苍白。

工作之初，他决意不让自己的生活苍白，所以他有两个女人为他做饭。他自以为受过高等教育，平衡感情的技巧便要比父亲略高一筹。他不会轻易地命名其中哪一个为自己的正式女朋友，但他也不会冷落到她们中的任何一个，他不会对哪一个多讲几句“我爱你”，但他也不会跟她们中任何一个少做一场爱。所以他的两个女人就像同一家超级市场同一个架子上两堆背靠背的红糖白糖，从来都不知道对方的存在，但从来都见光。

绵绵算是他的一个同事，两人的暧昧始于某个类似偷情的小游戏。他当然知道同一个公司谈恋爱是要出问题的，何况她年纪比他大，从理论上来说还应当是他的上司，所以他很早就对她说清楚，这件事完全要在神不知鬼不觉的情况下进行。而她是从四川过来工作的29岁单身女人，烫着一头他认为很像台湾肉松的淡红色卷发，做人和做事都是很辣手的那种，勾引起男人来也决不心软。对这种关系，她认识得颇为清楚，却有另一种想法。她认为女人到了29岁这个年纪，便如同在冷柜里放久了的圣诞蛋糕，要赶快将自己卖出去，否则味道也变质，意义也失去，只剩下一个外壳还是精美的障人眼目，但也只是透着冰冷的气息。更何况那模子还不停地做出其他新鲜的蛋糕出来，而自己只能眼巴巴地看着自己的樱桃干瘪。所以她看中了他，觉得是个可造之材，婚后也好控制，便觉得自己更不能放手，虽然眼下他还年轻，心不定，但绵绵继承了老一代为男人造胃的风俗，相信为他造出一个胃来，这胃便能一并连着他的心，使他们的关系有所突破。

绵绵确实一手养成了他所有吃辣的习惯。她是味觉上的巧妇和天才，制造出各种让他目眩神迷的味蕾触感，是他过往从来不能想象的。而她的秘密武器则是厨房里那一瓶一瓶密封起来的朝天椒、海椒、花椒、灯笼椒，以及自己亲手做的泡椒。那些或干硬或湿润的红色绿色的小东西，表面无不油光锃亮。它们在瓶子里静静地挤作一团，有如打了腊的被封存起来的欲望一般，但只要解放一些个，往油锅里一爆，或者在汤里一煮，它们被密封的表情马上生动起来，张牙舞爪地在空气中散布诱惑。而这辣油的诱惑在很长一段时间里确实是令他惟一上瘾的东西，直到他遇见冰冰。

冰冰并不是如绵绵一样可以自如把菜烧到出神入化的人，他刚认识她时她甚至连个炒鸡蛋都不会做。他猜测着她是那种怕油烫到手的女孩子，她微笑不语。在容貌上，她是那种光滑洁白到了极致的人，身体的姿态也总是配合着这种脆弱的姿色，微微含胸，微微抱臂，整个人往里缩的感觉，这极大地满足了他的保护欲。冰冰是自小移民加拿大的本地女孩，洋气，但又不是过分外国化，她的行为举止有时候让他想到母亲，所以就问她：“在温哥华你也吃本帮菜么？”而她会把眉毛低一低，说：“没有，我们大多数时间吃的是广东馆子呢。”这一句话给了他的饮食生活一个分岔，她什么都不会做，不会杀鸡，不会起油锅，但却去买了汤谱给他煲汤喝。想来这是最干净简单安全的烹饪方法，只要有足够的耐心和时间就可以。冰冰还是大学生，常常在没有课的下午，在自己的小公寓里，就这样手拿一本书，看着一锅汤，等到他下班过来就刚好能喝。他常常想着，她的汤，就和她的身体一样，没有技巧，但是够有诚意，所以每次热腾腾地喝着仍然会有一种罪恶感泛上来，不得不承认那也是一种不可替代的快感。

对于两个私人餐馆，他养成很好的习惯，一下班不会先去和绵绵碰头，而是径直去冰冰的小房间喝汤，这样既不会被同事怀疑与上司拍拖，绵绵也不会疑心到他另外还有一个缠绵的对象。并且从他自己的饮食学角度来讲，晚饭前最好是先喝顿汤，这样既有暖和的东西垫胃，又不至于吃得太多，在绵绵提供的大餐面前露出马脚来。而到了八九点钟，他则会对冰冰扮一个规矩的好员工，说要回去加班，并劝她看会书就早点睡觉，其实，从冰冰的公寓到绵绵的住所，不过一公里左右的路程，他步行着便能走到另一个热烈的起点，开始新一轮的火辣辣的饕餮。他便是这样周旋于两种迥然的风味之间，有着掌控一切的满足感。并且他的胃也似乎养成了天然良好的习惯——五点半一过即开始渴望一盅好汤的醍醐灌顶，而八点半一过，舌尖又在为了辣椒花椒豆豉豆瓣而骚动着。不同的女人温暖着他身体不同的部分，他觉得快乐，但那完美中似乎又有些类似脱节的不安，后来他安慰自己说，只是她们的味道太不同了，他两种都需要，却完全没办法用一种代替另一种罢了。

这样的关系风平浪静地维持了快要一年的时候，有天他走在路上，忽然发现有什么东西从他额头上悉悉索索往下掉，用手指蘸唾沫粘下来一看，却是些浓黑的毛发。他一惊，以为是头发，但显然那东西不是来自头皮。过了几秒钟，他意识到了更可怕的事情：那是他的眉毛。回到家，他对着镜子仔细地看了又看，果然，眉毛在掉，并且一再地在掉，可能前几天就有这样的症状了，但他都没有发现，今天被风一吹，这恐怖的事情便让他立即警醒了。他心里想着，仿佛前一天在冰冰家里喝白茅根雪梨猪肺汤时，已经有细小的毛发掉在汤里的感觉，但是当时没有注意。那汤如此甜美，让他要求着她连做两天，喝进去的时候人的思想意识都已经飞到九霄云外去了，何况还有下一站交错着黑黝黝红晃晃颜色的辣田螺。

他当天下午便请教了一个懂点中医的同事关于眉毛的怪事，同事立即毫不讳言地大声嘲笑他是否最近性生活过度，这当儿，他的眼角却瞄到隔着一道玻璃门的独立办公室里的绵绵在仔细打量他和旁人的对话，不禁心虚地摸了一下额头，心中检讨着，最近几天仿佛是有点纵欲过火的倾向，或者他真的应该节制一下，但那也不是他说了算的。他的闲暇时光至少有三个人有发言权，现在看来那真是麻烦的。

而到了周末的早晨，他发现正在脱落的东西除了眉毛，自己的头发也在一把一把地往下掉。他回忆起亲戚中某些做过化疗的人便是这个样子的。到了最后，眉毛头发全都松松垮垮地耷拉在头皮上，仿佛一阵风就会把他们变成秃子一般。他慌张地找出一顶帽子压在岌岌可危的头顶上，跑去最近的医院看令他觉得羞辱异常的所谓男性毛发再生门诊。在那个医生侃侃而谈三十分钟之后，他的药方上多了三四种稀奇古怪的擦剂和维生素C，最后将近离别的时候，医生豪放爽朗地大笑着安慰他，但眼珠却不停在他额头上滚动着：“你放心，这种病只要有勇气跑到我这里来治，我便有办法帮你治好。关键是要节制，要爱惜自己的身体，你要注意近段时间的饮食。”近段时间的饮食？他心里跳起一点小小的惊痛，好像被蚂蚁咬了一下一般。近段时间，他已经不断暗示或者要求两个女人以各自的方式为他补身体，绵绵给他煲了人参灵芝葱姜兔肉，冰冰则做了车前草芹菜汤给他喝。这一瞬间，他竟然觉得自己的脱发于两个女人都是不可饶恕的罪过。

但是事情远远没有他想象的那么简单。周日的上午，他早早去了绵绵家，跟她简要地说了下去医院看脱发的事情。彼时厨房正在烧着一大锅子麻婆豆腐，揭开锅盖，香味便上了身，不依不饶地拽着他的肩头和脚跟。前一天晚上冰冰给他做的蜂蜜豆腐羹仍在肥嘟嘟晕乎乎地在他的胃袋中你推我搡着，加上因为脱发的事没睡好，他说了几句便不说了，只是由着甜味和辣味在自己的喉头和鼻腔处捉迷藏。那边绵绵又娇嗔他不做事，只顾吃，一定要他帮忙切洋葱。他晕头转向地拿了个椅子在桌旁坐下，开始觉得自己的意识被辛辣的洋葱汁所蛊惑，已经随着一圈一圈的洋葱钻进那个透明的无限中去了。而一旁的绵绵则一边把他切好的洋葱拖上蛋糊，沾上面包粉，一个一个丢进油锅里炸，一边大声发表着维生素C治脱发果然有效之类的言论，他所能听到的也只是到此为止了。而下午四点左右，他走去冰冰家，继续感到头昏眼花，所幸的是冰冰熬了他最喜欢的冬阴功虾汤，继而还有前一天剩下的蜂蜜豆腐羹。他有点负气地一碗接一碗喝着汤，还把豆腐羹也吃完了，冰冰则神色忧郁地在一旁帮他剥着虾，有问题想问而不敢问的样子，但终于是开了口：“你最近是不是有点脱发？”他张口想回答，却渐渐地感到体力不支，眼前一片模糊，耳际也隆隆作响，最后听到的是冰冰的“多吃点维生素C”之类的话，以及看到了她夸张的C口型，仿佛是呲牙冷笑一般。……

他苏醒过来的时候是在病房，冰冰正在他身旁，但并没有垂泪。她一如平时地整个人往里缩着，医生歪头示意她能否离开，因为有话要问抢救回来一条命的病人，他这才明白过来自己之前是食物中毒了。“现在清醒了没有？”医生问，“如果清醒了，要劳烦病人回忆一下这一两个星期以来你的菜单。”他用微弱的声音一个一个详细地报上来，那些至够美味至够经典的菜式，医生却皱起眉头：“这便是发疯了，你倒是可以去告发你们家做饭的那个人。她把猪肺和田螺，兔肉和芹菜，豆腐和蜂蜜，豆腐和洋葱给你一起吃，以至你毛发脱落，耳聋眼花。但这还不是这次食物中毒的关键，你是不是有吃维生素C来挽回过你近期的脱发？但同一个时间你又吃下那么多虾，这两样东西在你的肚子里变成了砒霜。”医生还想往下说，这当下门却开了，绵绵神色严峻地走进来站住望着他，而他也望向她。

医生顿了一顿说：“所以你被诊断为砒霜中毒……幸好发现得早，救回来。”说完抬头看两个人神色都不对，便拿着病历书无声地消失了。而绵绵站在那里，简单地问：“你还好吧？”他答：“还好。”正在想不出什么对话说辞的时候，冰冰却推门进来，绵绵立刻露出满不在乎的神情，大踏步地转身走掉了。轮到冰冰扑到他床前，一边握他的手，一边狐疑地问：“刚才那个是谁？”他顺口答道：“可能是走错病房的。”于是顺势装睡。但在他心里，他几乎完全可以咬定，绵绵和冰冰，在很早的时候，不知因为什么机缘，她们一定是认识了。她们联手做了这样一场恶毒的闹剧，令他无话可说。从前他不知道最毒妇人心是什么意思，现在却知道了，也许应该矫正为最毒炊妇心。

事情过去很久以后，他仍然拒绝相信这是完全的巧合，尽管那两个女人仍然表现出毫不知道彼此存在的迹象，尽管他已经跟她俩都分手，尽管他也不会向两人坦陈对质，但他相信那天在医院自己绝对看到，在绵绵和冰冰错身而过的一刹那两人相对的眼神，那满足到几乎要笑出来的眼神。他只是在看到食物的时候才会有这种眼神，而那一刻，他明白他自己也只不过是种食物而已。

结婚三年半的时候，他的妻子想要开家餐馆。因为年轻时候得过教训，他终究有些畏惧女人，虽然他一直厌食，也讨厌和厨房有关的地方，但仍然不反对妻子的决定。并且他料定开餐馆这件事对妻子来说是三分钟热度的事情，情绪一过马上就会放弃，所以不如干脆做个好人，连声赞同，让妻子多少高兴一阵子。

妻子本来就是那种懒于做菜且厨艺平平的人，恰好碰到他这样马虎于吃食的丈夫，所以经常会炒一锅咸菜肉丝，分成一个一个保鲜袋这么装着，塞到冰箱的冷藏室里冻起来，他要吃的时候便拿出一袋来用微波炉加了热，便配了饭不死不活地吃。但这次，妻子倒是真的铆足了劲，四处找店铺，办执照，并且发誓要找最好的厨师来，是以搞得日日夜夜都只在外面奔忙。

有天下午他提前下班，忽然想要去看看妻子的餐馆怎么样了，已经有三四个星期与妻子日夜交错地过着，倒是很担心她的卖力近况。餐馆选在一条小马路的幽静一角，两层的微型洋房，他探头进去，原来里面都装修完毕，已经开始在置办各种器具了。想起刚来看的时候还是空白一片的老房子，现在已经有人进进出出，搬了各种各样的桌椅来。

他拦住了一个工头模样的人问他老板娘在不在，那人显然不认识他，冷漠地摇头不语。他又问厨师长在哪里，那人上下打量他一下，向里面大叫了一声某个名字，有个高高的身影便轻佻地走出来。

他看了他一眼，心想着妻子夸赞过无数遍的厨师长竟然是这样一个年轻漂亮的人，便说了些类似久仰之类的客套话，引起了那双浓眉毛的一点骚动：“你是哪位？”他向他自我介绍了一番，而那浓眉毛下面的五官却忽然紧绷起来，露出一点不自然的谄媚的表情：“噢噢，她刚刚出去了……那么她还是经常跟我们提到你的……她这人风趣得很，对我们员工都很好，还亲手做点心给我们吃。”说完便找了个理由躲闪过去了。

他却忽然觉得不舒服起来，一个人走到厨房，那是装修好了的现代化的银灰色的大厨房。那里似乎是禁地，进进出出的人没有一个会走动到这里来的，但桌上却有两把勺子，一个方形的饭盒子。他把脸凑近，一股咖啡和酒的香味冲鼻而来。提拉米苏并不是他陌生的点心，却以如此不寻常的方式出现。他忽然一阵紧张，但只消一会儿，他便换成了高高在上的姿态燎望着这盒暧昧的提拉米苏，他怎么也想不到，他的妻子默默地装了那么久，却竟然是会做提拉米苏的女人。又或者，女人不精通厨艺，那都是装的。只有想不想，没有会不会。

他默默地离开，到家已经快七点，上楼，洗手，盛饭，继而从冰箱里拿出那又一小袋的咸菜炒肉丝，用微波炉转了，拿出来，看到稀少的肉丝在黑压压的咸菜堆中艰难地挺起了胸，并且除了肉丝以外，还有一根显眼的异物，想来是烧菜时从妻子头上掉下来的头发。

他忽然想起八九岁的时候，还是幼童的他被父亲带去见识过何等华丽热闹的饭局，但在他的小份牛排上面，却夹带着一根女主人的头发。当时的他心中只想着，若换作是自己的母亲，纵使做的菜再不合胃口，那菜里也不会掉进半根头发的。这便是爱和不爱的区别。

想到这里，他决意为那碗咸菜肉丝，为自己吃过的所有食物大哭。

 

 

 

昨天夜里，或是今天早晨，梦见了爱丁堡。梦见自己走在the Mound的石板路转弯处，好像要去办什么事。

自从回到家里，每日无事，看看书，上上网。

读《我们仨》，里面有钱锺书杨绛钱瑗一家三口在英格兰游历时的记述；

翻《买书琐记》，数位作家在其中回忆自己在Charing Cross淘书的经历；

床头旁的书堆上的第一本书，也竟然是亨利詹姆斯的《英国风情》。想必是出国前本想预习，却又觉得最好还是待到归来时带上自己的心得再来品味，于是便放到了一边。

就连去上厕所时捎带上的小书里，也有一篇《英伦日志半叶》。

这本集子是《乡愁的理念》。 董桥在自序中写道：“乡愁”、“理念”、“感情”始终不脱中国人的心态；未必染上什么民族情，也许只是异乡人江山之梦的神话：寻寻觅觅之间，确有几分难平之意，恰似舒曼《童年即景》中的那一阕“梦”，满是天涯情味，越去越远越牵挂。

总是在此处对彼处牵肠挂肚，难怪得数年前就心醉于和达拉一起淘到的那张Out Here In There。现在想来颇有点一语成谶的味道。

言重了。

又到一年毕业时 最近总是在做关于未来的思考 生出许多莫名的焦虑和激动 偶然看到如下文章两篇 受益匪浅 且再此与奋斗论文的诸君共享之

President Drew Gilpin Faust’s speech at the Baccalaureate service for the Harvard College class of 2008 on June 3

In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom. Here I am in a pulpit, dressed like a Puritan minister — an apparition that would have horrified many of my distinguished forebears and perhaps rededicated some of them to the extirpation of witches. This moment would have propelled Increase and Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” But here I am and there you are and it is the moment of and for Veritas.

You have been undergraduates for four years. I have been president for not quite one. You have known three presidents; I one senior class. Where then lies the voice of experience? Maybe you should be offering the wisdom. Perhaps our roles could be reversed and I could, in Harvard Law School style, do cold calls for the next hour or so.

We all do seem to have made it to this point — more or less in one piece, though I recently learned that we have not provided you with dinner since May 22. I know we need to wean you from Harvard in a figurative sense. I never knew we took it quite so literally.

But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment. Let’s imagine [if] this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions. “What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago.” (Forty years. I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available. But please remember I was young for my class.)

In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year on just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly. And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.

Let me explain. It actually began when I met with the UC [Undergraduate Council] just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007. Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours—even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad. The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space. In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy. Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking?

There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it. There is the Willie Sutton approach. You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies. They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else. Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America; one of you will dance tango and work in dance therapy in Argentina; another will be engaged in agricultural development in Kenya; another, with an honors degree in math, will study poetry; another will train as a pilot with the U.S. Air Force; another will work to combat breast cancer. Numbers of you will go to law school, medical school, graduate school. But, consistent with the pattern Goldin and Katz have documented, a considerable number of you are selecting finance and consulting. The Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice. This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent. [For more information on the careers research by professors Goldin and Katz, see "Flocking to Finance," May-June, page 18.]

High salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut, the reassurance that so many of your friends will be working and living and enjoying the Big Apple alongside you, the promise of interesting work — there are lots of ways to explain these choices. For some of you, it is a commitment for only a year or two in any case. Others believe they will best be able to do good by first doing well. Yet, you ask me why you are following this path.

I find myself in some ways less interested in answering your question than in figuring out why you are posing it. If Professors Goldin and Katz have it right; if finance is indeed the “rational choice,” why do you keep raising this issue with me? Why does this seemingly rational choice strike a number of you as not understandable, as not entirely rational, as in some sense less a free choice than a compulsion or necessity? Why does this seem to be troubling so many of you?

You are asking me, I think, about the meaning of life, though you have posed your question in code — in terms of the observable and measurable phenomenon of senior career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics. The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché: easier to deal with as the ironic title of a Monty Python movie or the subject of a Simpsons episode than as a matter about which one would dare admit to harboring serious concern.

But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir-faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.

I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally successful, but to be meaningful, and you are not sure how those two goals fit together. You are not sure if a generous starting salary at a prestigious brand-name organization, together with the promise of future wealth, will feed your soul.

Why are you worried? Partly it is our fault. We have told you from the moment you arrived here that you will be the leaders responsible for the future, that you are the best and the brightest on whom we will all depend, that you will change the world. We have burdened you with no small expectations. And you have already done remarkable things to fulfill them: your dedication to service demonstrated in your extracurricular engagements, your concern about the future of the planet expressed in your vigorous championing of sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.

But many of you are now wondering how these commitments fit with a career choice. Is it necessary to decide between remunerative work and meaningful work? If it were to be either/or, which would you choose? Is there a way to have both?

You are asking me and yourselves fundamental questions about values, about trying to reconcile potentially competing goods, about recognizing that it may not be possible to have it all. You are at a moment of transition that requires making choices. And selecting one option — a job, a career, a graduate program — means not selecting others. Every decision means loss as well as gain — possibilities forgone as well as possibilities embraced. Your question to me is partly about that—about loss of roads not taken.

Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, representing a set of issues that is much broader and deeper than just one career path. These are issues that in one way or another will at some point face you all: as you graduate from medical school and choose a specialty—family practice or dermatology; as you decide whether to use your law degree to work for a corporate firm or as a public defender; as you decide whether to stay in teaching after your two years with TFA. You are worried because you want to have both a meaningful life and a successful one; you know you were educated to make a difference not just for yourself, for your own comfort and satisfaction, but for the world around you. And now you have to figure out the way to make that possible.

I think there is a second reason you are worried—related to but not entirely distinct from the first. You want to be happy. You have flocked to courses like “Positive Psychology”—Psych 1504—and “The Science of Happiness” in search of tips. But how do we find happiness? I can offer one encouraging answer: get older. Turns out that survey data show older people—that is, my age—report themselves happier than do younger ones. But perhaps you don’t want to wait.

As I have listened to you talk about the choices ahead of you, I have heard you articulate your worries about the relationship of success and happiness—perhaps, more accurately, how to define success so that it yields and encompasses real happiness, not just money and prestige. The most remunerative choice, you fear, may not be the most meaningful and the most satisfying. But you wonder how you would ever survive as an artist or an actor or a public servant or a high-school teacher. How would you ever figure out a path by which to make your way in journalism? Would you ever find a job as an English professor after you finished who knows how many years of graduate school and dissertation writing?

The answer is: you won’t know till you try. But if you don’t try to do what you love—whether it is painting or biology or finance—if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But don’t begin with it.

I think of this as my parking-space theory of career choice, and I have been sharing it with students for decades. Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never find a space. Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be.

You may love investment banking or finance or consulting. It might be just right for you. Or you might be like the senior I met at lunch at Kirkland who had just returned from an interview on the West Coast with a prestigious consulting firm. “Why am I doing this?” she asked. “I hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t like this job.” Find work you love. It is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you don’t.

But what is ultimately most important here is that you are asking the question—not just of me, but of yourselves. You are choosing roads and at the same time challenging your own choices. You have a notion of what you want your life to be and you are not sure the road you are taking is going to get you there. This is the best news. And it is also, I hope, to some degree, our fault. Noticing your life, reflecting upon it, considering how you can live it well, wondering how you can do good: These are perhaps the most valuable things that a liberal-arts education has equipped you to do. A liberal education demands that you live self-consciously. It prepares you to seek and define the meaning inherent in all you do. It has made you an analyst and critic of yourself, a person in this way supremely equipped to take charge of your life and how it unfolds. It is in this sense that the liberal arts are liberal — as in liberare — “to free.” They empower you with the possibility of exercising agency, of discovering meaning, of making choices. The surest way to have a meaningful, happy life is to commit yourself to striving for it. Don’t settle. Be prepared to change routes. Remember the impossible expectations we have of you, and even as you recognize they are impossible, remember how important they are as a lodestar guiding you toward something that matters to you and to the world. The meaning of your life is for you to make.

I can’t wait to see how you all turn out. Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.

 

文章来源 http://harvardmagazine.com/web/commencement/faust-baccalaureate-address-2008

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The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

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’ve experienced 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 fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

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 towards personal 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 might 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 could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

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 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 they had been forced to leave 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.

文章来源： http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

 it is my right, right?

I am addicted to music

                        to film

                    to notebooks

                        to socks

                    to my fantasy

                        to my illusion

I am addicted to you

                        & you

                           & you

                        & you

                           & you

                        & you

I have been filling myself

With all my addictions

                one

                after

                another

Still

I am not full

                  I need more

                    & more

               & more

          & more

     & more

& more

Yet

I know I will  not be full

 

I AM AN ADDICT