29.5.15

as commencement nears

I'm about to graduate with my Master's Degree in Urban Planning from MIT. Someone recently recommended J.K. Rowling's commencement speech at Harvard a few years back. Here is a snippet that touched me on how our internal states can affect external worlds:

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.

 - J K Rowling  (full speech available here)

1 comment:

Chelsea said...

it's even wonderful that a change within can reconfigure the relationships you have with other people, places, and things that once seemed negatively entrenched. A shift in view from within changes everything around you.