J K Rowling’s Commencement Speech At Harvard University | Words Of Wisdom

A lot of people around the world know J K Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling) as the author of Harry Potter stories. How she had a broken marriage and as a single parent she raised her girl and managed to write books, is almost everyone know and we are not going to discuss that inspirational journey here. She was the one who gave the commencement address to the Harvard University to the graduates of year 2008 on 5th June of the same year.

Let us have some glimpses of that words of wisdom in our own understanding.

• Don’t blame your elders to turn you to the wrong direction. Once you are old enough, you have to be mature enough and have to be ready to take the responsibility of all deeds you have done.
• Poverty is romanticized by fools only, as it leads a lot of humiliations. Climbing out of poverty on yourself by your efforts is something to proud of. If you know your parents did the same, rather then criticizing or something, respect them. Failure is a kind of poverty and it is to be overcome too.
• Some failures are inevitable. Keep yourself ready for failure but make sure it teaches you a lesson.
• Failure tells you to strip the inessentials from you.
• Fear of failure makes you to work harder and smarter in the similar way the desire of success.
• Failure may guide you to the right arena you belong (or at least let you know that possibly it is the wrong arena where you spent your efforts.)
• You should convert the rock bottom end which you reached due to a failure into the strong foundation to build your future.
• It is impossible to live without being failed (unless you lived so cautiously that it may not be considered as a life – don’t you think it is a failure in itself?).
• During the time followed by the failure, you gotta know the strength of your relations, your abilities and your inner strength too.
• Life is not a checklist of your acquisitions or achievements. It is complicated, difficult and beyond anyone’s total control.
• Imagination is the unique capacity to envision the stuff which is not there.
• Human beings are the creatures who can learn without experience the things, it is the unique ability.
• Use your ability or status to raise your voice for those who have no voice.
• We do not need magic to transform our world, we have those power already within us.
• The saying for the story “Not how long it is but how good it is, matters the most” applies to the life as well.

PS:
This beautiful speech was converted in a book called “Very Good Lives” with lovely illustrations by Joel Holland, and published by Little Brown Book Group in April, 2015. Proceeds from the sales will be divided amongst Harvard University and charity organisation Lumos.