Benefits of failure?

....... 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.

--- by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, who was principal speaker at Harvard University's 357th Commencement on June 5 2008. The above was a small part of her speech on that day.