J.K. Rowling gave an inspiring speech – The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination – at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in 2008. She shared her life experiences and reminded everyone not to forget to fail and also the importance of imagination.
These are some of my favourite excerpts of the speech -
“And 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 live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
“So given 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.”
“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
You can catch the video and the full transcript here
