Failure

 J.K. Rowling’s commencement speech at Harvard titled “The Fringe Benefits Failure” on Ted.com brings so many personal things to mind in reference to failure. J.K. Rowling is the well-known British novelist best known as the author of the Harry Potter series. She was very honored to have been chosen to give the commencement speech, but was very nervous. She injected humor at the beginning about losing weight because she was so nervous and offered up some Harry Potter tidbits. This humor is what relaxed her and allowed her to build trust with the audience. At the beginning of her speech she said something that has stayed with me and we all should remember it. She said don’t blame others for your mistakes and failures, not even your parents; you are responsible for your own life. 

J. K. Rowling said that you will have failures in life and that she feared failure, but failure set her free. I relate to her when she talks about the adversity that she overcame. She had to overcome poverty, unemployment, and single motherhood and divorce 7 years after graduating college. Overcoming this failure is what helped her become such a great novelist. She talks about a significant event in her life before she started writing while working for Amnesty International in London. She worked in the research department and would read letters and watch videos of torture victims, rape victims, executions, missing persons all from totalitarian regimes. This experience taught her to value imagination. Valuing imagination allows us to empathize with humans whose experience we have never shared.

J. K. Rowling ends her speech talking about friends. She says friends from college have been her friends after graduation and for life. These friends are the God Parents of her children and she has used their names in her books. The point she is making is that we should value our friends and keep them close.

This speech means a lot to me personally. I have experienced failures in my life, but I have learned from each one of them. My failures have made me stronger. Like J. K. Rowling I feared failure, but no more. We will have failure in life. Don’t be afraid of failing; take each failure as a learning experience and a new start.