I found it inspiring... I reflect on my previous entry about seeking a greater sense of meaning in life...one I have always looked for and not yet found... and I think about people I am close to who seem to have a sense of drive and passion in their lives, and these are, I notice, people who have faced adversity and had to come through it with only their own resources to rely on. My parents, wonderful wonderful people that they are, have always been there for me. I have the luxury of knowing that no matter what - they are there to back me up, support me, bail me out and dust me off if things go pear shaped. I appreciate this deeply and have done my best to never take it for granted... but I also realise that I this has given me a sense of immunity to failure in some ways. I have the blessing of a confidence that no matter what happens, somehow I will be ok. I am also blessed with a lack of attachment to having particular things, or to things being a particular way - I have travelled a lot in developing countries, have lived simple or lived in luxurious resorts, and I know I am pretty happy generally where ever I am, with little or with more. So... In a sense, perhaps this sense of immunity to failure is a partial contribution to my sense that I am missing a passionate drive for anything much.
My mum always taught me "lower your expectations and you will be happy more of the time" So... generally I am happy.... but I also miss the passionate drive for high expectations...the pushing of oneself to the utmost of ones ability, the striving for the almost unachievable.... perhaps it is the fear of failure that is one of the essential ingredients in this magical potion...
But back to Ms Rowling's eloqence...
" The fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure....
I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. 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 already 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. ,...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....Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned...."
Courtesy of scootergrrl
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