One of Storytelling’s Best on Failure & Imagination

For those who have not had the chance to hear JK Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement address on “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination,” see the YouTube video below. She addresses the Harvard graduates with humility, wisdom and gratitude, as well as humor, and teaches all that the power of imagination reaches far beyond creativity, innovation and invention–it allows us to empathize with anyone, no matter where they come from or who they are. What an excellent reminder as we strive for more patient centered care!

She says:

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 empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.