Learn English J. K. Rowlings Magical Harvard Speech with Big Subtitles

the first thing I would like to say is

thank you not only his half had given me

an extraordinary honor but the weeks of

fear and nausea I have endured at the

thought of giving this commencement

address have made me lose weight a

win-win situation now all I have to do

is take deep breaths squint at the red

banners and convince myself than act

that I am at the world’s largest

Gryffindor reunion

delivering a commencement address is a

great responsibility or so I thought

until I cast my mind back to my own

graduation the commencement speaker that

day was the distinguished British

philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock

reflecting on her speech has helped me

enormous Lee in writing this one because

it turns out that I can’t remember a

single word she said this liberating

discovery enables me to proceed

without any fear that I might

inadvertently influence you to abandon

promising careers in business the law or

politics for the giddy delights of

becoming a gay wizard

you see if all you remember

in years to come is the gay wizard joke

I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary

Warner achievable goals the first step

to self-improvement

actually I have wrapped my mind and

heart for what I ought to say to you

today I have asked myself what I wish I

had known at my own graduation and what

important lessons I have learnt in the

21 years that have expired between that

day and this I have come up with two

answers on this wonderful day when we

are gathered together to celebrate your

academic success I have decided to talk

to you about the benefits of failure and

as you stand on the threshold of what is

sometimes called real life I want to

extol the crucial importance of

imagination these may seem quixotic or

paradoxical choices but bear with me

looking back at the 21 year-old that I

was at graduation is a slightly

uncomfortable experience for the 42 year

old that she has become half my lifetime

ago I was striking an uneasy balance

between the ambition I had for myself

and what those closest off to me

expected of me I was convinced that the

only thing I wanted to do ever was write

novels however 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 would

never pay a mortgage or secure a pension

I know the irony strikes with the force

of a cartoon anvil now so they hoped

that I would take a vocational degree I

wanted to study English literature a

compromise was reached that in

retrospect satisfied nobody and I went

up to study Modern Languages hardly had

my parents car round at the corner at

the end of the road then

ditched German and scuttled off down the

classics corridor

I cannot remember telling my parents

that I was studying classics they might

well have found out for the first time

on graduation day of all the subjects on

this planet I think they would have been

hard put to name one less useful and

Greek mythology when it came to securing

the keys to an executive bathroom now I

would like to make it clear in

parentheses 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 moment you are old enough to take

the wheel responsibility lies with you

what is more I cannot criticize my

parents for hoping that I would never

experience poverty they had been poor

themselves and I have since been poor

and I quite agree with them that it is

not an ennobling experience poverty

entails fear and stress and sometimes

depression it means a thousand petty

humiliations and hardships climbing out

of poverty by your own efforts that is

something on which to pride yourself but

poverty itself is romanticized only by

fools what I feared most for myself at

your age was not poverty but failure at

your age in spite of a distinct lack of

motivation at University where I had

spent far too long in the coffee bar

writing stories and far too little time

at lectures I had a knack for passing

examinations and that for years had been

the measure of success in my life and

that of my peers now I am not done

enough to suppose that because you are

young gifted and well-educated you have

never should known heartbreak hardship

or heartache talent and intelligence

never yet inoculated anyone against the

Caprice of the fates

and I do not for a moment suppose that

everyone here has enjoyed an existence

of unruffled privilege and contentment

however the fact that you are graduating

from Harvard suggests that you are not

very well acquainted with failure

you might be driven by a fear of failure

quite as much as a desire for success

indeed your conception of failure might

not be too far removed from the average

person’s idea of success so high

have you already flown ultimately we all

have to decide for ourselves what

constitutes failure but the world is

quite eager to give you a set of

criteria if you let it so I think it

fair to say that by any conventional

measure a mere seven years after my

graduation day I had failed on an epic

scale an exceptionally short lived

marriage had imploded and I was jobless

a lone parent and as poor as it is

possible to be in modern Britain without

being homeless the fears that my parents

had had for me and that I had had for

myself had both come to pass and by

every usual standard I was the biggest

failure I knew now I’m not going to

stand here and tell you that failure is

fun that period of my life was a dark

one and I had no idea that there was

going to be what the press has since

represented as a kind of fairytale

resolution I had no idea then how far

the tunnel extended and for a long time

any light at the end of it was a hope

rather than a reality so why do I talk

about the benefits of failure simply

because failure meant a stripping away

of the inessential I stopped pretending

to myself that I was anything other than

what I was and began to direct all my

energy into finishing the only work that

mattered to me had I really succeeded at

anything else I might never have found

the determination to succeed in the one

arena where I believed I truly belonged

I was set free because my greatest fear

had been realized and I was still alive

and I still had a daughter whom I adored

and I had an old typewriter and a big

idea

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 failure gave me an inner

security that I had never attained by

passing examinations failure taught me

things about myself that I could have

learned no other way I discovered that I

had a strong will and more discipline

than I had suspected I also found out

that I had friends whose value was truly

above the price of rubies 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 all

the strength of your relationships until

both have been tested by adversity such

knowledge is a true gift for all that it

is painfully one and it has been worth

more than any qualification I ever

earned so given a time Turner I would

tell my twenty-one year old self that

personal happiness lies in knowing that

life is not a checklist 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 now you might think that I

chose my second theme the importance of

imagination because of the part it

played in rebuilding my life but that is

not wholly so though I personally will

defend the value of bedtime stories to

my last gasp I have learned to value

imagination in a much broader sense

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

empathize with humans whose experiences

we have never shared one of the greatest

formative experiences of my life

preceded Harry Potter though it informed

much of what I subsequently wrote in

those books this revelation came in the

form of one of my earliest day jobs

though I was sloping off to write

stories during my lunch hours I paid the

rent in my early twenties by working at

the African research department of

Amnesty International’s headquarters in

London there in my little office

I read hastily scribbled letters

smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by

men and women who were risking

imprisonment to inform the outside world

of what was happening to them I saw

photographs of those who had disappeared

without trace sent to amnesty by their

desperate families and friends I read

the testimony of torture victims and saw

pictures of their injuries

I opened handwritten eyewitness accounts

of summary trials and executions of

kidnappings and rapes many of my

co-workers were ex political prisoners

people who had been displaced from their

homes or fled into exile because they

had the temerity to speak against their

governments visitors to our offices

included those who who had come to give

information or to try and find out what

had happened to those who had they had

left behind I shall never forget the

African torture victim a young man no

older than I was at the time who had

become mentally ill after all he had

endured in his homeland he trembled

uncontrollably as he spoke into a video

camera about the brutality inflicted

upon him he was a foot taller than I was

and seemed as fragile as a child I was

given the job of in supporting him back

to the underground station afterwards

and this man whose life had been

shattered by cruelty took my hand with

exquisite courtesy and wished me future

happiness and as long as I live I shall

remember walking along an empty corridor

and suddenly hearing from behind a

closed door a scream of pain and horror

such as I have never heard since the

door opened and the researcher poked out

her out her head and told me to run and

make a hot drink for the young man

sitting with her she had just had to

give him the news that in retaliation

for his outspokenness against his

country’s regime his mother had been

seized and executed every day of my

working week in my early twenties I was

reminded how incredibly fortunate I was

to live in a country with a

democratically elected government where

legal representation and a public trial

were the rights of everyone everyday I

saw more evidence about the evils

humankind will inflict on their fellow

humans to gain or maintain power I began

to have nightmares literal nightmares

about some of the things I saw heard and

read and yet I also learned more about

human goodness at Amnesty International

than I had ever known before

amnesty mobilizes thousands of people

who have never been tortured or

imprisoned for their beliefs to act on

behalf of those who have the power of

human empathy leading to collective

action saves lives and frees prisoners

ordinary people whose personal

well-being and security are assured join

together in huge numbers to save people

they do not know and will never meet my

small participation in that process was

one of the most humbling and inspiring

experiences of my life

unlike any other creature on this planet

human beings can

and understand without having

experienced they can think themselves

into other people’s places of course

this is a power like my brand of

fictional magic that is morally neutral

one might use such an ability to

manipulate or control just as much as to

understand or sympathise and many prefer

not to exercise their imaginations at

all they choose to remain comfortably

within the bounds of their own

experience never troubling to wonder how

it would feel to have been born other

than they are they can refuse to hear

screams or peer inside cages they can

close their minds and hearts to any

suffering that does not touch them

personally they can refuse to know I

might be tempted to envy people who can

live that way except that I do not think

they have any fewer nightmares than I do

choosing to live in narrow spaces leads

to a form of mental Agra phobia and that

brings its own terrors

I think the willfully unimaginative see

more monsters they are often more afraid

what is more those who choose not to

empathize enable real monsters for

without ever committing an act of

outright evil ourselves we collude with

it through our own apathy one of the

many things I learned at the end of that

classics corridor down which I ventured

at the age of 18 in search of something

I could not then define was this written

by the Greek author Plutarch what we

achieve inwardly will change outer

reality that is an astonishing statement

and yet proven a thousand times every

day of our lives it expresses in part

our inescapable connection with the

outside world the fact that we touch

other people’s lives simply by existing

but how much more are you Harvard

graduates of 2008 lightly to touch other

people’s lives your intelligence

your capacity for hard work the

education you have earned and received

give you unique 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

change we do not need magic to transform

our world we carry all the power we need

inside ourselves already we have the

power to imagine better I’m nearly

finished I have one last hope for you

which is something that I already had at

21 the friends with whom i sat on

graduation day have been my friends for

life they are my children’s godparents

the people to whom I’ve been able to

turn in times of real trouble people who

have been kind enough not to sue me when

I took their names for Death Eaters

at our graduation we were bound by

enormous affection by our shared

experience of a time that could never

come again

and of course by the knowledge that we

held certain photographic evidence that

would be exceptionally valuable if any

of us ran for prime minister

so today I wish you nothing better and

similar friendships and tomorrow I hope

that even if you remember not a single

word of mine

you remember those of Seneca another of

those old Romans I met when I fled down

the classics corridor in retreat from

from career ladders in search of ancient

wisdom as is a tale so is life not how

long it is but how good it is is what

matters I wish you all very good lives

thank you very much

[Applause]