Very Good Lives : The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination

Reflecting on her speech has

helped me enormously in writing this one,

because it turns out that I can’t remember

a single word she said. This liberating

discovery enables me to proceed without

any fear that I might inadvertently

influence you to abandon promising

careers in business, the law, or politics

for the giddy delights of becoming a

gay wizard.

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.

You will never truly
know yourself, or the strength of
your relationships, until both have
been tested by adversity.

also
found out that I had friends whose
value was truly above the price of rubies.

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.

Simply because failure meant
a stripping away of the inessential.

Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.

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.

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.

There is an expiration date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.