The Inevitability of Frustration and Bewilderment and Their Benefits

This morning, in Class 314, when we came to the paragraph in Unit 12 about "inevitable anxieties, frustrations, bewilderment" students will be faced with in college, which, according to Derek Bok, "are often indispensable to our well-being, for they are the spurs that push mind and spirit to some new and greater conception of ourselves and the world around us," I introduced to students J. K. Rowling's commencement speech at Harvard in 2008, entitled "The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination."

In the speech, she mentioned her own failure and how failure had benefited her. The following is a the passage that impressed me a lot.

"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."

This passage can be used to explain Derek Bok's words as shown above in the first paragraph.

You might like to watch and listen to part of J. K. Rowling's speech regarding the benefits of failure. Click on the URL and listen from 0:10 to 2:40. Following the URL is the script of this part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kh_tSiqL1U&feature=related

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 anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, 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 foundation 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 qualification I ever earned.

 

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list 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 anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.