Harvard Magazine – The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html
The Harvard University Gazette – The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2008/06.05/99-rowlingspeech.html
Photo credit: Jon Chase/Harvard News Office
J.K. Rowling 在 Harvard 畢業禮上的演講 (Harvard Magazine 有原裝影片)
重點 1︰悟從失敗中來
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.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
重點 2︰想像力的重要性 (同情心 + 為弱勢發聲，讓世界變得更好)
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.
Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
how much more are you [...] likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. 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.
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
相比起 3 年前 Steve Jobs 在 Stanford 演講自我奮鬥
Stanford Report – ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
J.K. Rowling 的多了對其他人的關注和關懷，由此可看出他們的個性有多不同。
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看YouTube學英文 – 哈利波特作者J.K. Rowling在哈佛大學的演講
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/YYteacher/9871494
