The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination by J.K. Rowling

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
J.K. Rowling , author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination," at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.
Text as delivered follows.
Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and,above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world's largest Gryffindor reunion.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

The Paradox about Problems

I am not an adept lover of romance movies, though i do love watching other kinds of movies. Very recently i watched two particular romance movies that teach the same lesson. These two movies are 'not easily broken' and 'the vow'. From these movies i learnt that it takes the problems and upside downs of life to make things become right. There are some problems that won’t just go out of our lives unless we learn the lessons from them. Problems have a way of smoothening things up and making them better. They refine our characters and help us form better perspectives about life. We tend to treat people better, love our family more and become better givers. The usual concept we predominantly have about problems is negative, grave and causes nausea. But when we look at our lives over time, we’ll come to notice the impact these problems have had on the course of our lives. Poverty for instance helps people to become better managers of money, sickness helps to bring us to our senses regarding our lifestyle (most especially for people that never give themselves rest and are always in constant stress, sickness is the signal that they need rest), divorces and breakups are pointers to the fact that one needs to be more caring and should put in more work into the next relationship and as a final example, death teaches us to value our lives and of those we dearly care about. It’s all just Nature’s way of balancing life….Ying Yang, as the Chinese philosophy puts it.

Let Time do its work!

Here we are, in the 21^st century. Everything moves at high speed. If it isn’t, it’s considered obsolete. The internet, cars, jets, airplanes, even marriages must be all done quickly. The coffee is prepared fast, the noodles make waiting for food to get done an easier task. People have come to more easily fulfill their desires of instant gratification more easily and quickly than ever. Time isn’t seen in a matter of decades, years, days, weeks but in minutes and seconds now. Information zaps all in front of us that we find it difficult to quantify and reproduce what we are learning as before.

As the time race continues, most people take the same sick perspective toward success in their lives. They expect everything to work out quickly and easily without them breaking a single bead of sweat. They want to get it now! Now is the thing, not later. But things don’t work out like that. Everything has its own time and season. In the movies, there could be overnight success, but in reality, there is no such thing. One has to toil and wait for the ripe time to come.

Every single thing in this world has its own time of success, including the human race. If a friend or colleague is at the peak of his game (career, marriage, academics, relationship, family) and you are not, even though  you started out together, don’t fret or get jealous (though its entirely human to do such), just get relaxed and convince yourself that things will soon work out fine for you too. In every person there is this voice that speaks to us. Funny enough the voice in question only amplifies when things go wrong, like when your girlfriend rejects your long awaiting marriage proposal, or when the promotion bypasses you even though you know you deserve it. What you should do at such gloomy times is to pick yourself back up, shrug those confident shoulders and change what that voice is saying! Affirm yourself in positive ways by using positive words to make yourself feel really good.

Success is a turn by turn event. Don’t get freaked out if the tide isn’t flowing in your favour, very soon the wind will blow and all will be well. Just keep working hard and doing what you know how to do best and believe in. Keep putting commitment, dedication and endurance and perseverance as top priority values for your life and am telling you, as long as the sun will come up the next day, things will get better!

What are you looking at?

There are times when everything looks bleak, dull, uninteresting, tiring, frustrating and you just want to get out and end it all. There are times when it all looks as if all hope is lost, all desire to continue snuffed out by the disappointments of life. When times such as these come, what do you do? Do you continue to wallow in mud of self pity and drench yourself in the waters of gloom?

Yes, most times that’s the natural, default way of reacting to situations like these. To remain in this psychological and emotional state and expect others to understand us. Well, sorry to say but how can they if they aren’t feeling the same things? Misery loves company and if misery doesn’t get its company, things get really bad. It gets worse if we find no one to have around us to comfort us in times like these. So one good thing is to have a circle of people around that are there to help us back to our feet at such times.

Besides that, our perspective of life falls and rest on how we perceive situations around us. What is focused on in one moment has a large part to play in what happens in the next moment. Focus determines body physiology, the way we relate to people, the way people see us and how we react to situations in the environment. Change on the outside does not come except there is a change from within. When one focuses on everything that is wrong and could go wrong, darkness falls but when one switches to seeing everything that’s right, like the priceless opportunity of being alive, hale and hearty, having a good and supportive family, loving and caring friends, a steady marriage, career or academic pursuit, the whole picture comes alive. The light comes on and there is a visible change of attitude.

When next you are not feeling too good inside and you would like that to change, all you have to do is to switch your perception to everything that’s good and worth being happy about in your life and not too soon from then, you’ll be thankful than ever.

Looking good!

                Everyone wants that occasional compliment from people around. “Hey, you’re looking great, I like your shirt”, “hi there, you are the best dressed I have seen today. Nice shoes”.  There is inner desire to be appreciated and recognised by other people around us. So we try our possible best in using the resources available in the most astonishing of ways. We invest our money to buy these things so as to fulfil that gratification. Well, that is good thinking and action .Keep it up and well done. Your outlook the world matters  a lot .We’ve been told that the way you dress is the way you will be addressed, so it is quite paramount that we look good on the outside.

                But what about the inside? A lot of people walking the streets may look good on the outside and smell all nice and sexy but if you could check their inside, you would be singing “why oh why”. Their lives on the inside is a total contrast to their lives on the outside. They might dress to fool and impress people, but they’re true colours are eventually revealed. They might seem, lovely, gentle and perfect in public places like the Church , place of work, parties but in their personal lives  at home it is a different story.

                This article may be talking to you or someone you know. I did not write this to condemn anyone but to enjoy you to put things in other. There is no need for unnecessary impression management. Come out in your true colours. It is people of this kind that the Lord Jesus called fools and hypocrites (Matt 23). Let your life be clean, nice and healthy both on the inside and outside. Be good to people everywhere. No backstabbing, backbiting, gossiping or slandering. Behaviours such as these have being known to be detrimental to one’s health. Be free and open. Take life and embrace it in its entirety and you’ll come to be showered by so much love.