J.K. Rowling Gives Stirring Address at Harvard Commencement
J.K. Rowling gave
a commencement speech at Harvard in which she extolled the virtues of imagination -- and of failure as preparation for success in life. There were many young children in the audience, who were determined to hear their favorite author speak.
Rowling, who was given an honorary doctor of letters degree, urged the Harvard grads to use their influence and status to speak out on behalf of the powerless.
"We do not need magic to transform our world," she said. "We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better."
Imagination gives one the ability to empathize with others, she said.
"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation," Rowling said. "In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."
Rowling described a low point seven years after graduating from college, when she was a poor single mother.
"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive," Rowling said. "You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."
She called such knowledge "a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."
We heard it was a stirring address. Commencement speeches are notoriously difficult to craft, but clearly she was up to the challenge.
