JK Rowling the Fringe Benefits

JK Rowling

The Fringe Benefits of Failure

Author J.K. Rowling, famous for her mega-successful Harry Potter children's book series, gave the commencement address at Harvard University in June, 2008. Her speech was funny, endearing and profound, and the audience gave her a standing ovation.

Several things make Rowling a good speaker. In her very first sentences, she admits her own fear about public speaking and used self-deprecating humor to put herself and her audience at ease. Rowling acknowledged her position as a popular fiction author, joking that she felt as if she were at the "world's largest Gryffindor reunion," a reference to Harry Potter's House at Hogwart's School of Magic. Both she and her audience were in on the joke, and she had successfully cracked the ice. Rowling also admitted that she could not remember a single word of the commencement address she heard 21 years previously, so why worry?

Rowling's speech hit upon two themes; the unexpected benefits of failure and the importance of imagination. Before she was a successful writer, Rowling failed spectacularly. Her marriage was short lived, she was a single mother, and she was very, very poor. Her and her parent's worst fears had come true. "By every usual standard," she says, "I was the biggest failure I knew." Rowling had no way of knowing the eventual success that awaited her, and she admits that those were very dark days in her life. So what are the benefits of failure? According to Rowling, failure strips away everything inessential. "I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized," she says. "Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life," she says.

Rowling's tale of her own failure is inspirational because we all know about her current successes. If a poor single mother working as a research assistant can find time to curry away and write her novels, longhand, which of our dreams is too fragile to survive failure? The concept that failure can actually be a good thing is truly inspirational. We too often see failure as the end of the road, but Rowling encourages u to see it as a place to begin anew. Failure is a reality will all have to face and, somehow, overcome. "It is impossible to live without failing," Rowling reassures us, "unless you live so cautiously that you may as well not have lived at all -- in which case, you fail by default." Failure can teach lessons that no other experience can. It is a gift that is "painfully won," but worth it.

Rowling again invokes Harry Potter imagery when she tells her audience that, had she a time-turner, and could go back in time, she would tell her graduating self that "life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement." So many of us get caught in the trap of comparing our life to our list of expectations. Rowling is telling us to do the opposite, that our diplomas and our resumes are not the substance of our lives. This may seem ironic in a commencement speech, but the point is clearly made. A diploma is something to celebrate and achievements should certainly be marked, but failures will still come, and we should always look for the lessons we can learn from such setbacks.