I had failed on an epic scale.
An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded...
And I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britian...without being homeless.
Life is difficult,
and complicated,
and beyond anyone's total control.
And the humility to know that, will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
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, where I believed I truly belonged.
I was set free.
Because my greatest fear had 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 a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
Leonardo DiCaprio(Inception [2010]):
Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate.
An idea that is fully formed, fully understood...
J.K.Rowling: I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever,
was write novels.
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 and for all that it is painfully won.
'Rock bottom' wasn't fun.
At all.
I'm not going to romanticize 'rock bottom', but...
it was liberating.
What did I have to lose?
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.
As is a tale, so is life.
Not how long it is...
But how good it is, is what matters.
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