Friday, June 6, 2008

The Power of Failure and Imagination


Recently Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling delivered the commencement address to a class of graduating Harvard students. As one would expect, it was magical (ha!). She spoke of the power of failure (it was during her years of poverty that she knew she had no place to go but up), and the power of imagination (not the imagination of wizards and muggles per se, but the ability we have as humans to empathize with our brothers, and then imagine a better world for us all, and then work towards building that world).

A couple of excerpts:

"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 (ups and downs)."

"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. "

For text of the entire speech, Click Here.

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