Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. JK Rowling
I discovered Harry Potter in college after book 3’s release. I confessed to a friend that I was spending every moment I could reading Harry Potter, and he accused me of being a potter-head. He said, “you’re doing potter when you should be doing your homework.”
I pre-ordered from book 5 on and read my copy while 3 other family members were snuggled up reading theirs, because we couldn’t possibly buy only one copy and wait for our turn to read. I remember when book 6 was released, reading it in line at the grocery store and noticing other shoppers doing the same. This is a picture of me at platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross station in London last year.
We got to the station at 10:00 pm on our way back to my friend’s house who lives an hour train ride outside of London. She said that if you visit this spot during the day, your can pay for props like scarves and Harry Potter glasses and such, and wait in a line and pay to take a picture. We didn’t have to wait, or pay, but we didn’t have props either. You can see the doors in the picture for a shop next to the platform that sells everything Harry Potter.
I love Harry Potter because Rowling got kids reading who weren’t typically readers, but I also love her personal story. Poor thing got thrust into the public eye, and you can literally see her squinting in the spotlight. She didn’t like being a public figure, and never seemed to give a good interview, until her interview with Oprah .
JK Rowling gives her Harvard commencement speech on the benefits of failure. She had hit rock bottom in her life. She was a college graduate living on welfare and raising her baby alone. But she says, “Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began directing all my energy into finishing the work that really mattered to me. Had I succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I felt I truly belong. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive.”
She says, “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all. In which case you’ve failed by default.”
I think she was telling us to live boldly. Try to take our failures and build something great from them. Don’t let them defeat us.
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