Fringe benefits of failure

J.K. Rowling gave a rather good commencement address at Harvard this past Thursday, entitled “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.” (Thanks to Joni for the heads-up.)

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.

I love that! Especially the part about not pretending to be something else anymore. Lately I’ve a similar sort of awakening, though not because of rock-bottom failure like her. Being yourself matters so much.

And then on to imagination:

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

Inspiring and motivating, at least for me. Imagination is a form of magic, one potent beyond our understanding, and it’s dizzying in the limitless possibilities for both good and evil. Heady stuff, the imagination is.

Finally, she closes with a wise and wonderful line from Seneca: “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.” Mmm.

*doubletake*

You read my blog? Or did you just read the first like. . . two lines and then read the speech ;P?

Haha, no, I do read your blog. Seriously. In fact, I really liked that post and still have it open in a tab in Firefox because I’ve been meaning to post a comment. So there. :P

Smart lady. I especially liked that last part about imagination. I tend to think that imagination is the basis of human ethics/morality, because it gets you out of your own head and into other peoples’.

Hmm, that’s a good point. Imagination’s the basis of a lot of things, really — technology and innovation, for example. I wonder what life would be like without imagination…if there even could be a life without it. I agree that we need to see things from others’ perspectives if we’re to find peace and love. Self-centeredness never was happiness.