对现在42岁的我来说，回顾21岁的毕业时刻并不是件舒服的事情。
在前半生中，我一直奋力挣扎在自己的雄心壮志与亲人对我的期盼之间取得平衡。
我自己认定今生唯一想做的事情就是写小说。
然而，我父母出身贫寒，没有受过大学教育，他们认为我那过于活跃的想象力只不过是个人的怪癖，既不能帮我偿还贷款，也不能帮我弄到养老金。
我现在明白这些讽刺就像用卡通铁砧去打击你,但……
他们希望我取得一个职业技能学位；而我却向往在英国文学方面深造。
最后双方达成了一个都不甚满意的妥协：我改学现代语言。
可是，没等父母的车绕过拐角从视野里消失，我就放弃了德语去报名学习古典文学了。
我不记得是否曾告诉父母我其实在学习古典文学，他们也可能在出席毕业典礼的时候终于觉察了真相。
我想，在全世界所有的学科当中，当涉及到挣钱的时候，我估计他们很难想到比希腊神话更没用的学科了。
我必须声明，自己并没有为父母的观点而责怪他们的意思。
你不能总是责怪父母指错了方向；当你长大成人、可以独立掌舵的时候，这份责任就应该由你独立承担了。
况且，我不可能责怪父母希望我永远不要经受贫穷这一期望。
他们自己饱受贫寒之苦，而我也曾经是个穷人，我十分赞同他们的想法——贫穷决不是什么高贵的经历。
贫穷会产生恐惧和压力，有时还会陷入忧伤沮丧之中，这些都意味着无尽的卑微和艰难。
通过自己的力量挣脱贫困境地，这的确是值得自豪的事情，只有傻瓜才会觉得贫穷本身是浪漫的。
Take the Wheel
By J.K. Rowling
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 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 the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but . . .
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 criticize 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 something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.
整理：2024年5月15日于北城家园
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