The 357th Commencement of Harvard, 5th June 2008, was marked by the delivery of a speech by author JK Rowling entitled ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’. Rowling, who also was also made an honorary doctor of letters at the ceremony quipped of being so nervous about delivering her address that she had lost weight. She also joked that she could not remember the address given at her own graduation so felt confident that she would not influence anyone to give up on careers in politics or business and become ‘gay wizards’.
Commenting on her own experiences of personal failure and what that had meant to her she also explained she felt this had been a basis for her ultimate success by stripping away all the unnecessary baggage of life to leave a solid foundation for her to move forward with. Her use of the theme of ‘Imagination’ in her speech she pointed out had a larger spectrum for her than just helping to rebuild her life.
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. 
Siting one of her earliest jobs at Amnesty International in her 20’s as a huge influence on her formative years and a source of inspiration to her writing she states
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine 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.
Closing her speech with a quote from the Classics, a subject she herself studied at university, Rowling said “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
Read the full Harvard Speech at http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2008/06.05/99-rowlingspeech.html