What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty but failure.
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 7 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.
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 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 in anything else, I might never have found the determination to
succeed in the one arena where 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 l adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea.
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've lived so cautiously, that you might as well have not lived at all.
In which case, you've failed by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I have never attained by passing examinations.
Failure taught me things about myself that I could've learned no other way.
I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline that I had suspected.
I also found out that I have friends, whose value is 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.
And for all that it is painfully one.
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 checklist 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.
Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not.
And therefore, the found of all invention and innovation.
In it arguably most transformative revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us
to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without
having experienced.
They can think themselves into other people's places.
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times everyday 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.
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 transform our world.
We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.
We have the power to imagine better.
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.