Noteworthy

Every work day for the past maybe three weeks, work is less stressful because of constant email exchanges with a group of girls officially known as GG (not Gossip Girl, orig kami noh). One of today's emails was particularly noteworthy, let me share it here. Thanks May!

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From J.K. Rowling's The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of the Imagination, her 2008 commencement speech in Harvard. I leave you with this excerpt:

"...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 already 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 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 to me than any qualification I ever earned.
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"Life" or "Living" happened to me when I moved to the US. I say this because it was then that the world that I knew or at least was used to was turned upside down and shaken out. Quite literally and of the bear mauling kind. Ouch! Wasn't easy, wasn't pretty. Now, I can say that yeah, failing and making mistakes IS part of it. Tayo na lang ulit, sayang ang oras. AMEN!