I know I’ve been MIA for some time. Seems I finally decided to get the work done on my house, and, even though I was paying someone to do it, having the house under construction just sucked the life outa me. Not to mention the bucks out of my checkbook…
Anyway. I tripped across a fascinating video today of J. K. Rowling giving the Harvard Commencement address in 2008. It’s just wonderful.
And it’s about failure. Interesting topic about which to speak to a bunch of people graduating from… Harvard.
Here’s a part that really resonated with me:
“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.”
Here’s the video:
J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.
