JK Rowling: Finding Love Through Mistakes
For most of us, JK Rowling needs no introduction. This famous author has inspired and enchanted youth for several generations. The theme of his books is finding love through mistakes.
According to folk wisdom, behind every successful man is a woman (and vice versa). Applying that same picture of language, we could also say the story behind each successful person from which we can learn.
This is especially true for writers, as many of them inevitably end up (or perhaps even try to avoid it) to include part of their own personal world of experience in their stories.
These autobiographies are often full of mistakes. In fact, I remember very recently hearing a writer – whose name I don’t happen to remember now – say that if his profession had taught him something, it was the ability to “shoot”. This means throwing pieces of paper in the trash as a result of him writing something useless. He accepted this as an integral part of his work.
At the end of our lives, we certainly have a basket of mistakes, whether we accept this or not. It is a law written into our human existence. I am not talking now about mistakes that are objective, but about mistakes that we perceive as real mistakes.
The first steps of the project are modest
You may be wondering why in the world I decided to write an article about JK Rowling. I made it because of a speech he made at Harvard University at the end of the academic year 2008. This has been the inspiration for what I am going to cover in this article. He described a situation that had happened a few years earlier, and in his own words he was:
He believes that dreaming big things requires big investments. This is all the more true because the propaganda around us constantly signals that certain shortcomings mean that it is not possible for us to achieve certain things. It says we are not attractive enough, successful, popular….
Fear of failure v. Finding love
Fear of failure can be crippling, but also motivating. How we experience it depends on a number of factors. Perhaps the most important of these is self-love. A person who recognizes and respects himself is confident in the currents trying to push him to the bottom. An individual who does not believe he is worth saving is surrendering. Even hitting the bottom mud must not push them back towards the surface.
It all also depends on the people around us. Interestingly enough, there is a paradox in the story of Harry Potter that invariably repeats itself in all of our lives. We have both a certain tendency to loneliness and a need to interact with others, because we are social beings. Failure, or its fear, teaches us whom we can truly trust. Worthy of trust are those who stay by our side, whether they agree or not. Their love is not conditioned to what we hope for or what we have. They love us because of who we are. Finding true love therefore takes place in the midst of failures.
To achieve something, we must take the First Steps alone
It is said that many teenagers feel misunderstood… Similarly, most university students, young workers, middle-aged workers, older workers and most retirees. The truth is that only very few people feel that they receive support from others after deciding to aim for a particular goal. In the case of teenagers, it is usually their own parents, from whose direction that lack of understanding seems to emerge.
Rowling experienced this lack of understanding in his own life as his parents rejected the idea of studying English literature instead of modern languages. However, he also says that “there will come a time when we must stop blaming our parents for steering us in the wrong direction”. Arriving at this point is in itself a sign of maturation. It teaches us to stop blaming others – in this case, our parents – and to take increasing responsibility for our own actions.
Such failures for an immature person, characterized by impulsivity, can equip them with wisdom. Failures also create new dimensions to our accomplishments, either because we have slipped from those accomplishments or feel we end up doing so at any moment. Many people are not aware of their accomplishments until they experience the possibility of losing them or, in fact, have already lost them.
Finally, failure leads to a time of crisis in which the most meaningful things in life appear with all their might. So what are those important things? Nothing of greater or lesser value than what we already have… We have our own selves , and everything we have learned in the ups and downs of life. So don’t close your eyes when you fail. Don’t let the experience of grief and rejection take its toll on you. Hold on to the belief that you can rise again. It will give you strength until the sun rises above you again.
When you crash, try not to crush yourself in too many places. However, the most accurate way to protect your self-esteem. There’s – nowhere else – there’s a key that will get you moving again. Finding love for yourself will prevent the resistance you face from stopping you in your places.
