Fail Better Soon

Long-Distance Love-Interest (LDLI) posted something about JK Rowling's supurb commencement address at Harvard on HIS blog, so I will do the same.

While LDLI was struck by her thoughts on imagination, as was I, what stayed with me even more were her excellent observations on failure. She said:

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.

This is so true and, to me, incredibly touching. In my vivid fantasy life, my Tony Award speech for "JDate: The Musical!" begins this way:

"Two thirds of the way through the worst year of my life - when my marriage had ended, and my museum career went down the toilet, and briefly I went broke - I looked up and said, 'That's it! I am going to write a musical!'"

Happiness fills up a lot of time. Failure frees up a lot of time. Because it is usually experienced as personal losses, failure is an absolute windfall, time-wise. No more husband? No more hours spent going to his work things or trying in vain to be attractive enough to save your marriage. No more money? Okay, no more recreational shopping, gym membership, or cable television - three losses that yielded roughly (in my case) an extra 18 hours a week to spend creating something. No longer relevant at work? No problem - toil steadfastly and invisibly in the office, and find that you no longer have to take work home, nor are you tired when you leave your job and come home to work at your avocation. Fail enough and - voila! - hours of unprogrammed time on your hands, plus the desire to reinvent yourself and your life. Something could happen.

I look back at that dark period as one of the most significant, pregnant periods of my life. I am so grateful for it. At the beginning of my downward spiral, I came up with the storyline for my play. And while I was nursing a monster hangover, I began to hear the notes that in a few weeks would become the melodies for the play's songs. As Garrison Keillor once said, "If I had not been so unhappy then, I would not be this happy now."

It's sort of a crazy story, isn't it? The kind that can only happen in the theater. Or life.