Veritas

It is easy to be carried away by the occasion.  To feel because of the pedestal we have been raised unto that we are immortal in our youth, in our intellect. However, although not the point of her speech, I think J.K Rowling rightly points out that years from now, we won’t remember what it was like, what we were, or what we believed we were. Years from now, we won’t be able to remember the speaker, or what he or she said, in a manner, we won’t be up on that pedestal. There would be no just cause to be carried away by ourselves. Unless we  spot an enormously gargantuan ego. Having said my bit, I am moved and touched by the thought that was put into the message of her commencement speech. It is seldom that a speaker can stand rooted to the ground in the midst of 20,000 of the brightest people who are probably destined for great things, and resist the temptation to be carried away and degenerate into a spiel of praises and advice of how not to lose sight of their goals. However what she said strikes a chord with me, a soft chime on a raw nerve. The need to remember the others out there who haven’t got the privilege that have been bestowed upon us. Those who do not inherit the circumstance in which one can absent-mindedly pursue their own glory. In all the success we forge, I think the greater man would look behind him, and extend a hand, a lesser person would be engulfed in the occasion. Harvard 2008 Commencement Speech by J.K Rowling