It's a hot, sweaty and exciting week here in RI for your fearless writer. It is the week that the final installment of the Harry Potter movies comes out! Yep, your writer is a HP Geek (thanks to the gentle but erstwhile urgings of my fabulous Ceeeeeeeee who got me reading the books) and she's proud of it!
But really that's not what this weeks blog is about. It's about a speech I read by J.K. Rowling who gave the commencement address for Harvard University in 2008. I have read the speech dozens of times over the years and each time it touches me. She speaks of failure and imagination and how both are inevitable in life and how both teach us in very different ways. Failure is inevitable and painful but it makes us stronger, faster and better. Failure can often defeat us for a time but in my experience it ineveitably spurs us on to do better the next time. Failure also makes us kinder, more humble people (usually anyway). Appreciative of what we have in our lives and what we need to make our lives more fulfilling.
And Imagination? Well I think you can guess why imagination is important. But to the slower kids in the back row of the special bus let me say this. Without imagination we wouldn't be able to laugh or empathize with people or enjoy books or movies. When you cannot imagine, you cannot believe the story that is made up in front of you. When you cannot imagine I think you often live in a world that is boxed in and colorless, a world where you fear the reality of life rather than seeing what the potential of life could be. I personally shudder to think about what life would be like without the vast and potent imagination I (and all my friends) have. We wouldn't come up with funny band names like "Crotch Fire" or the funny hats my friend Sarah makes or the crazy stories Amy makes up on a regular basis. My life would be sorely lacking without these fun romps through my and my friends imaginations.
I think about this a lot actually but every once in awhile I am so dang grateful for what I have that I don't mind the failures, I don't mind the utter terror life often brings us (being unemployed being my current fear) and I don't mind the pain that comes with the failures because when I look back and see, really see what has happened and what I have learned, I feel grateful for the lesson (most of the time anyway) and even more grateful I can put it all behind me and move on.
And I am ridiculously grateful for the imagination I have. Life would be so much less magical without it and as JK says, "We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."
So on this special week, whether you read Harry Potter or not, take a moment and count your blessings, count your ducks that are neatly in a row and count your fingers, your toes and the hairs on your head and be grateful. Then take that moment of gratitude, let it spin out of you like a spell from a wand and bless those you love (maybe even a few peeps you don't like, cuz lets face it, everyone could do with some gratitude in their lives, friend or foe).
Wands OUT!
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