I’ve just finished watching JK Rowling’s address to this year’s graduates from Harvard, and I strongly recommend that you watch it too. It was funny, powerful, moving and inspirational – everything you could want and more from a commencement address.
One of the key phrases for me was
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.
Isn’t that just incredibly empowering? The woman who, for the last decade, has brought the wonder of magic to the lives of children and adults alike, strips away the fiction to reveal that we all hold the potential to make a difference to both our own lives and to the lives of others.
Whether you are graduating this month, whether you graduated years ago, whether you intend to graduate in years hence, or whether you chose a different route entirely from that of academia, watch this (20min) clip and take her advice to heart. The key themes are of failure and imagination, and your life may well be richer for having taken the time to listen to what she has to say about both.
If you had been in JK’s shoes, what would your message have been? What advice would you like to give to those just starting out? What advice was given to you that you’ve since found valuable?
I believe that’s the greatest piece of advice someone can start out with. It’s important for everyone of us to know we are powerful enough to change the world a little, even if it’s actually a small portion of the world.
The best advice I ever got, in different forms and from different people, was to stay true to myself and what I believe in. It’s a really rewarding strategy.
Fantastic speech — it moves through a whole range of emotions in a very short time and ends with a wonderful message. That long shot about 8-9 minutes in really does look like something straight out of Hogwarts, though!
If I had to give that speech, I’d have told them all to do what they love. So many of life’s stresses and strains are solved by finding work you love and complimenting them with hobbies that keep you smiling. I think that’s especially relevant to an audience of Harvard graduates, too…
A great speech and a good post. I would suggest to live with passion. Passion at work and passion at play.
To be passionate about you and about what you do can lift your spirits and energize your efforts.
Thanks for sharing.
Amy, I don’t think my attention span will take me through 20 minutes so thank you for summarising the message! It’s a very powerful one.
We don’t need ‘magic’ to make a difference, to be heroic… we just need to recognize and realise (=make real) the powers we already have.
Joanna
Amy, thank you so much for finding and sharing. I will watch the video when my brain is not so muddled but I love what you summarised so far. We don’t need magic – very powerful message! Just what I needed to hear today. Thank you Amy!
Karen
xx
I disagree slightly. I would say that if we use the power inside ourselves, we find out magic exists.
And sometimes it takes a magic moment to realise that we have that power.
Wow, it must have been amazing to be there.
I certainly believe in a ‘magic moment’ too, David – I try to notice as many magic moments as possible during my day – Eckhart Tolle and Jill Bolte Taylor have helped me so much in this respect and it is all about the little things, nothing huge. Things that you observe and record here, Amy.
I have read your blog for a while now and love it……so here is my first comment to you! I also wanted to let you know that I have tagged you to write about ‘Places I have called home’ for my meme on NaBloPoMo this month. Here are the ‘instructions’ on my blog:
http://quatrepattes.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/places-i-have-called-home/
hope you enjoy delving into some memories,
look forward to reading the results,
Lune x
Thank you so much for sharing that Amy. It is an extremely powerful speech that will remain with me. It achieves what any great speech must in that it causes one to stop and reflect and potentially change.
Hello Amy,
It’s been a while since I caught up on what’s happening in your world, so I was delighted to have time this evening to drop on by… and even more delighted to find you referring to JK Rowling’s commencement address – that I had just written about!
I haven’t watched the clip, but I did read the transcript and was very moved. I was hit initially by her talk of failure, and how that enabled her to do what she was meant to do (write).
But I see that your impression, the power to imagine better, is equally powerful and life-changing. What a speech!
Karen x
Rowling’s speech to Harvard was perfect. I love that she talked about failure to these high achievers.
But as far as failure goes, I truly believe if you do your best you cannot fail, because your best is always good enough. It may not be someone else’s measure of best, but that isn’t ever your problem.
Trying to always be THE best – that’s a real set-up for frustration. What a person sees as failure is often a step on the path to success.
Amy,
I teach in a small, rural school. My library aide has two daughters: one graduated from Colgate three years ago, the other was in this year’s graduating class at Harvard.
When Emily was accepted at this premiere Ivy League school, I asked my cousin to contact her. He also grew up in a small town, graduated from Yale, and I now a Harvard professor. He told her that the values and work ethic that got her to Harvard would also enable her to be successful there.
He, and Emily, and many others, created their own magic to achieve their dreams. Rowling’s message is a true and empowering one!
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Thank you to everybody for responding so positively to this post – it seems to have really struck a chord with all of you!
I know that I will carry with me many of the key points from this address expressed so articulately by JK.
I hate to be the only negative one here. But in answer to your question I wish at commencement someone had forced me to learn the meaning of this famous quote from a Mr. Acton
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. ” from Wikipedia.
I particularly like the later parts of the quote that are generally omitted. With a little bit of extrapolation, “Our leader is a great man, we should do as he says”
In plain English, do not for one minute trust, those with power, your boss, his boss and so on. They achieved their positions because they are very good at concealing their corruption. Do not expect to see the corruption.
If I could have learned that and it’s implications early on, life could have been so much easier.
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