The Rainy day ....

It is poetry time again. In the last few days I have been absorbing this poem 'The Rainy Day' by H W Longfellow.

It is a beautiful poem starts off as an observation of a rainy day and comparison of a typical rainy day to life. The best is kept at the last, when the poet feels that it is the common fate across all the people and hopes that every one should go through a dark patch once in their life time to appreciate the best parts in their life. The lines are wonderfully crafted - 'Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.'

The poem is good stand alone but what made me appreciate it more was the Harvard commencement address made by J K Rowling on 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination'. In her address, Ms. Rowling , talks about the advantages of Failure. what propelled her to become the woman she is now. She hit rock bottom and her greatest fear had been realized, and there was nothing to be afraid of. She also takes a strong stance when she says 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 provided her an inner security, made her much more confident about her abilities, she discovered more about her during these testing times than ever before. She realized the strength of her will and her ability to fight back. Failure teaches a lot of lessons, lessons which we would have overlooked during better times. The Darwinian statement 'Survival of the fittest' assumes a totally different meaning than it was before.

Everything said and done, there are better ways to learn about things than just the hard way but learning it that way makes one internalise the learning and adopt it very easily in their life. The perspectives and the attitude towards life and the rest of the things changes. As H W Longfellow says,' Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary'.

The poem 'The Rainy Day' can be found here and the commencement address of JK Rowling here.

In line with my previous post, the line of HW Longfellow was a status message of a friend on my gtalk and so was the URL for the JK Rowling commencement address. I am sure both of them do not know each other. :) Patterns, Patterns and more patterns !!!