J.K. Rowling, a British author best known for her wildly popular Harry Potter series, delivered this year’s Harvard University commencement address in early June. Her theme, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”, has vaulted the transcript (and video) of her speech to Internet fame status. I must admit her message is a very good one, and her delivery quite entertaining.
Among my favorite passages from the speech, specifically concerning the importance of imagination:
And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
… snip …
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.
And a quote that is all too true:
…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.
…snip…
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 full transcript is available online, and the video is on YouTube and just about every other blog possible. It’s well worth a read/look.