Impossible to Live Without Failing
Impossible to live without Failing: J.K. Rowling
By박세연 / Seyeon Park
You may once have heard Joanne Rowling, also known as J.K. Rowling, the most successful writer in history. Many people only know her as the author or famous novelist of the Harry Potter book series, unaware of her life before her author career. Now she is believed to be living a more prosperous life than any other woman, with more fortune than the Queen of England, a happy family, and her successes as a writer. The effort behind her success is hidden and overshadowed by this perception.
J.K. Rowling was born in 1965 as the eldest daughter of a scientist (her mother) and an aviation engineer (her father), and lived in Gloucestershire, southern England, during her childhood. She wanted to become a successful woman, inspired by reading the autobiography of Jessica Mitford every day, which her big aunt gave her as a gift. She later said that she admired Jessica Mitford so much that she named her daughter after the British-American author. Rowling developed her dreams of being a writer day after day. She loved reading books more than anyone and showed her writing talent. In her school days, her studies were at a high level, and she represented the on-campus female students on various occasions. Following her school career, she entered the University of Exeter, where she majored in French Literature and Classics. Exeter College was a famous noble school, with most students being children of wealthy families, but a few, including Rowling, were from a lower class. So far, Rowling’s life seemed to look unfurl flat, and it seemed to be no problem for her to achieve her dreams with her hard work, talent, and amicable university degree. However, J.K. Rowling has lived a more lonely and more challenging life than anyone else.
Rowling's assumptions in Gloucestershire were not easy. Her mother had an incurable disease called multiple sclerosis for about ten years, and she had to spend most of her time in a wheelchair, and thus, the housework and care for her sister were mounted on Rowling’s shoulders. Withstanding her unusual family problems, Rowling pursued her dreams and entered the University of Exeter, as stated before. Even after graduating from college in 1987, Rowling lived through various temporary jobs, dreaming of becoming a writer and, more specifically, dreaming of becoming a novelist. On her way to work, she developed the first few ideas that later became the Harry Potter series. She later wrote on her social media, "If you define the birthplace of Harry Potter as the moment when I had the initial idea, then it was a Manchester-London train. But I am perennially amused by the idea that Hogwarts was directly inspired by beautiful places I saw or visited because it is so far from the truth. I don't know what triggered the idea, but the idea of Harry and the School of Magic came to mind so clearly that I was thrilled." However, at the age of mid-twenty, she was cut off from her job under the position of a non-regular worker, and at the same time, her mother died. In the meantime, the relationship with her father got worse. One of the reasons is that, shortly after her mother died, her father remarried his secretary. However, her life had to go on, and so she pursued her dreams and developed the fragile idea of the first Harry Potter book. One day, she saw an advertisement for an English teacher recruitment in a newspaper she had seen, triggering her flight to Portugal.
For a while, it seemed as if she was getting used to life in Portugal and regained a life of little happiness, but when she met her husband, Georges Arantes, she was forced to live through a different nightmare than before. Despite the birth of her daughter, Jessica, Georges Arantes did not care for his family, committed domestic violence, and abused drugs. Arantes would later state the following: “I admit I slapped her, but I am not sorry." Tired of this life and afraid of her husband’s abuse towards her daughter, Rowling, along with her daughter, made a night escape to England. However, having a bad relationship with her father, she was forced to find her sister Diana Rowling and spend weeks in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the help of the state. Luckily for her, she was allowed to enter a rental house called Council Flats, set up by the government for low-income people, and started earning her living subsidy of £69 per week. In such a life, she later confessed the feelings of the situation, saying that it was a house that she did not want to live in. Her depression only intensified in such a terrible living environment. Then in March, her husband, Arantes, came and further abused her and her daughter, and so Rowling reported her husband to the police, leading to a divorce between the two.
After that, Rowling continues developing her Harry Potter manuscripts that she had drafted at The Majestic Cage Café in Portugal while continuing her teacher training program to earn money necessary to raise her daughter. Finally, in 1995, Rowling sent her Harry Potter manuscripts to 12 publishers. However, they refused to publish her work because they did not like the dark atmosphere of the novel. However, Rowling does not despair, and finally, in 1997, the London publishing house Bloomsbury discovered the value of her book. The behind-the-scenes story known at this time is that when the publishing company editor-in-chief showed the manuscript to his child, who immediately fell in love with the novel, the Bloomsbury publishing corporation agreed to publish J.K. Rowling’s first book. That's how Rowling came to the world through the first edition of the “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,” which would be a turning point in her own life.
Many people now look at her life and are reminded of the Cinderella story, but Rowling’s life was nothing like a princess story; She was a lonely, single mother and a primary recipient suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. The only thing in her life that she never gave up on was her dream as a novelist. Looking back, Rowling likes to compare her life with a river bed; "Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life,” a metaphorical symbolization that would inspire many people. In 2001, Rowling married doctor Neil Murray to lead a happy life. She used the money she earned to donate to an organization that supports the search for a cure for multiple sclerosis, the disease to which her mother had become a victim. In her 2008 Harvard graduation speech, Rowling described her experiences with the following words: "We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already."
Rowling thinks this way. She was struggling with pain and despair. She overcame those days and stood up, so she said, to become the confident person she is now. "It is impossible to live without failing at something. Unless you have lived cautiously, you might not have failed at all, but in which case, you might have failed by default. Failure taught me better things about myself," she says. As can be concluded, just because failure may have meant despair and discouragement, it is essential to our lives.
What kind of life have you been through? Or what kind of life do you think you will live? That life, too, will suffer. Rowling always says she values her failures in her speeches. Although we as humans oppose the thought of accepting failure, we can use our mistakes as a springboard to become the best version of ourselves and accomplish our dreams, no matter what they may enclose.