The Boy Who Lived

I’m back from visiting Robyn in Orlando. She feels slightly famous now after being profiled here for 8 weeks. If you’re ever in the Orlando area, hit her up for some devil’s food cake with salted caramel frosting. I can’t quit it.

While I was there, we pilgrimaged to the Mecca that is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando. Full disclosure, I may have wept just a little when we got there. Three times. Walking around absorbing the magic (and the Butterbeer) was transcendent.

On the flight home (maybe crying again, maybe not), I remembered that TED recently re-ran J.K. Rowling’s Commencement speech at Harvard. The theme of her talk was failure. After describing the significant and painful failures she experienced as a young broke single mother in her twenties, Rowling explains:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned. (Emphasis mine.)

She went on to talk about the importance of imagination, which was more heartbreaking than I had expected. You can see the whole thing here, or read it here.  Give it a few repeats to be sure you get it all.

I think many of us can relate to the “rock bottom” that Rowling describes in her speech. Those seasons in life that, looking back, may have been short on calendar days but in the moment felt like excruciatingly long endless nights. When you are much more familiar with the end of your own personal rope than you ever wanted to be. The white-knuckle part of the ride that is life.

Rowling’s speech — combined with my experience in Orlando reminiscing over the story of the boy who lived– reminds me that the gifts that come from life’s failures are precious. Rewards like security, self-worth, knowledge of what you and your friends are made of; these are things we long to see and know as we deal in this mortal coil. In my life, each failure has definitely meant a “stripping away of the inessential;” a return to what I know to be true about myself and others. Thank you, J.K. Rowling, for this reminder of the higher purpose of failure, and that hard-fought battles bring the sweetest victories. And thank you, Robyn, for driving me all over Orlando, especially to Krispy Kreme and Whole Foods on the same day.

Whatever season you are in, may you take time to pause and be thankful for the seasons of failure that are inevitable and invaluable. And for the gifts that are disguised within it. May you not fail by default. Expecto Patronum.

 Are You Leading The Life You Want?