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

  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-