However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished

“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 quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension,” wrote J. K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter and one of the most beloved storytellers of our age. In this reflection, she speaks not only of her own childhood but of a truth that spans generations — the eternal tension between imagination and practicality, between the dreamer’s vision and the realist’s caution. Her words echo the sorrow and strength of those who are told that their gifts are trivial, that their wonder is impractical, that the imagination — the source of all art, invention, and faith — is a thing best kept small.

Rowling’s parents, shaped by the hardships of poverty and the uncertainty of survival, viewed the world through the eyes of necessity. To them, stability was the highest form of success — a mortgage, a pension, the steady hand of a predictable life. Such values, born from struggle, are not to be scorned; they are the lessons of endurance. Yet, as Rowling reveals, there is a danger when the hunger for security eclipses the hunger for meaning. For the imagination, if dismissed or suppressed, does not vanish; it withers. And in its place grows the silent regret of what might have been. Her words remind us that those who dream are often misunderstood — not because their vision is foolish, but because it stretches beyond the limits of those who fear uncertainty.

In the ancient world, this conflict between imagination and survival was already known. Consider Galileo, who dared to look through his telescope and see a universe that contradicted the wisdom of his time. His parents, like Rowling’s, urged him to study medicine, a path of honor and stability. Yet his imagination led him instead to the stars. The price of his curiosity was persecution; the reward was immortality. Or think of Vincent van Gogh, dismissed by his family and peers as unstable, his art seen as useless extravagance. Only after his death did the world understand that his “overactive imagination” had captured eternity in color. Thus, Rowling stands among this lineage of visionaries — those who turned doubt into destiny, who proved that the imagination, though intangible, can feed more souls than any coin.

Rowling’s life gives flesh to this truth. Alone, unemployed, and struggling as a single mother, she began to write the tale of a boy wizard in cafés, pouring her imagination onto scraps of paper. By the measures of the world, she had nothing — no security, no guarantee. Yet she had the one thing the pragmatic world underestimates: the conviction that stories matter. That belief transformed her life and, through her, the lives of millions. The very imagination her parents deemed impractical became her salvation and her empire. It bought not only mortgages and pensions but hope, courage, and wonder for children across the earth.

This quote also holds a quiet compassion for her parents. Rowling does not mock them; she understands them. They lived in the shadow of scarcity, and scarcity breeds caution. Their doubt was born of love, though it was misplaced. It teaches us that sometimes, those who discourage our dreams do so not from malice but from fear — the fear that the world will not be kind to the dreamer. Yet it is precisely that fear that must be defied. For the world only changes when someone dares to imagine beyond its limits. Imagination, in this sense, is not rebellion against reality, but an act of faith that reality can be reshaped.

We see this lesson reflected in every age. When Wright Brothers first dreamed of flight, the world laughed, saying that man was not meant to leave the ground. When Marie Curie pursued her invisible elements, she was told that science was no place for a woman. Yet both proved that the “impractical dream” is often the beginning of the world’s next chapter. And so it was with Rowling, whose imagination not only earned her fortune but rekindled the world’s love for storytelling itself.

Let this, then, be the teaching passed down: never despise your imagination, no matter who doubts it or dismisses it. The world may measure success in coins and contracts, but the soul measures it in creation. A mortgage may buy a home, but the imagination builds worlds. A pension may secure one’s old age, but imagination keeps the spirit young forever. Do not fear to dream impractically; fear instead the life that never dared to dream at all.

And remember, children of wonder: every empire of the mind begins as an “amusing quirk” in the eyes of others. Guard that spark. Nurture it in solitude, even when no one believes. For as J. K. Rowling teaches, the imagination that the world once laughs at may one day become the very thing that changes it. The dreamer’s burden is doubt — but the dreamer’s reward is creation eternal.