biggest
failure
I knew
Ultimately we all have to decide for
ourselves what constitutes failure, but
the world is quite eager to give you a
set of criteria, if you let it. So I think
it fair to say that by any conventional
measure, a mere seven years after my
graduation day, I had failed on an epic
scale. An exceptionally short-lived
marriage had imploded, and I was job-
less, a lone parent, and as poor as it is
possible to be in modern Britain
without being homeless. The fears that
my parents had had for me, and that I
had had for myself, had both come to
pass, and by every usual standard I was
the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here
and tell you that failure is fun. That
period of my life was a dark one, and
I had no idea that there was going to
be what the press has since represented
as a kind of fairy-tale resolution. I
had no idea then how far the tunnel
extended, and for a long time any
light at the end of it was a hope rather
than a reality.
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 any-
thing else, I might never have found
the determination to succeed in the
one arena where I believed I truly
belonged. I was set free, because my
greatest fear had been realized, 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 foun-
dation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale
I did, but some failure in life is
inevitable. It is impossible to live
without failing at something, unless
you live so cautiously that you might
as well not have lived at all—in
which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security
that I had never attained by passing
examinations. Failure taught me
things about myself that I could have
learned no other way. I discovered
that I had a strong will and more
discipline than I had suspected; I also
found out that I had friends whose
value was truly above the price of rubies.
The knowledge that you have
emerged wiser and stronger from
setbacks means that you are, ever
after, secure in your ability to
survive. You will never truly
know yourself, or the strength of
your relationships, until both have
been tested by adversity. Such
knowledge is a true gift, for all
that it is painfully won, and it has
been worth more than any qualifi-
cation I’ve ever earned.
humility
So given a Time-Turner, I would
tell my twenty-one-year-old self
that personal happiness lies in
knowing that life is not a checklist
of acquisition or achievement. Your
qualifications, your CV, are not your
life, though you will meet many
people of my age and older who
confuse the two. Life is difficult,
and complicated, and beyond any-
one’s total control, and the humil-
ity to know that will enable you
to survive its vicissitudes.
Now you might think that I chose
my second theme, the importance of
imagination, because of the part it
played in rebuilding my life, but that
is not wholly so. Though I personally
will defend the value of bedtime
stories to my last gasp, I have learned
to value imagination in a much
broader sense. Imagination is not
only the uniquely human capacity
to envision that which is not, and
therefore the fount of all invention
and innovation; in its arguably most
transformative and revelatory capa-
city, it is the power that enables us
to empathize with humans whose
experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative
experiences of my life preceded
Harry Potter, though it informed
much of what I subsequently wrote
in those books. This revelation came
in the form of one of my earliest
day jobs. Though I was sloping off
to write stories during my lunch
hours, I paid the rent in my early
twenties by working at the African
research department of Amnesty
International’s headquarters in Lon-
don.
There in my little office I read
hastily scribbled letters smuggled
out of totalitarian regimes by men
and women who were risking
imprisonment to inform the out-
side world of what was happening
to them. I saw photographs of
those who had disappeared without
a trace, sent to Amnesty by their
desperate families and friends. I
read the testimony of torture
victims and saw pictures of their
injuries. I opened handwritten eye-
witness accounts of summary trials
and executions, of kidnappings
and rapes.
Many of my coworkers
were ex–political prisoners,
people who had been dis-
placed from their homes or
fled into exile because they
had the temerity to speak
against their governments.
Visitors to our offices in-
cluded those who had come
to give information, or to
try to find out what had
happened to those they had
left behind.
I shall never forget the African
torture victim, a young man no
older than I was at the time, who
had become mentally ill after all he
had endured in his homeland. He
trembled uncontrollably as he spoke
into a video camera about the
brutality inflicted upon him. He was
a foot taller than I was and seemed
as fragile as a child. I was given the
job of escorting him back to the
Underground station afterward, and
this man whose life had been
shattered by cruelty took my hand
with exquisite courtesy and wished
me future happiness.
A
SCREAM
OF
PAIN
AND
HORROR
And as long as I live I shall
remember walking along an empty
corridor and suddenly hearing,
from behind a closed door, a
scream of pain and horror such as
I have never heard since
. The door
opened, and the researcher poked
out her head and told me to run
and make a hot drink for the
young man sitting with her. She
had just had to give him the news
that, in retaliation for his own out-
Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination Page 2