Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Ah, Fawkes.

You may recall that we get to see him at the end of the book when he makes an appearance in the Chamber of Secrets where he saves the day with his healing tears and ability to carry Harry, Ron, Ginny AND a forgetful Lockhart to safety.

But, in this scene, we meet our hero on a Burning Day. Today? His beautiful red and golden plumage is nowhere to be found. Instead, we get to see the ugly side of him.

And, alas, so it is with us. It would be awesome if we had our bright and shiny heroic plumage in full display every day, but that’s not quite how it works, eh? Those Burning Days are, well, a little ugly. (Hah.)

Let’s connect this wisdom to a couple other great teachers.

First, we have Joseph Campbell. Of course, he told us that a good life is basically one hero’s journey after another.

Imagine the beginning of a hero’s journey. That’s when you answer the call and step into the forest of the unknown. That’s a bit scary. In a sense, you need to die to an old version of yourself. In fact, he says “To have a resurrection one must first have a crucifixion.” Ouch.

Sounds a lot like our friend Fawkes, eh? We must burst in flames and then be born again from our ashes. The phase *right* before and after? Not so pretty.

And, if the good life is one hero’s journey after another (it is!) and the end of one journey and the beginning of the next is kinda like a crucifixion/burning (it is!) then we better get comfy looking kinda ugly on a regular basis.

Tragic but true. :)

Then we have Josh Waitzkin and his wisdom on the willingness to get burned in pursuit of greatness. Here’s how he puts it in The Art of Learning: “How can we incorporate these ideas into the real world? … My response is that it is essential to have a liberating incremental approach that allows for times when you are not in a peak performance state. We must take responsibility for ourselves, and not expect the rest of the world to understand what it takes to become the best that we can become. Great ones are willing to get burned time and again as they sharpen their swords in the fire. Consider Michael Jordan. It is common knowledge that Jordan made more last-minute shots to win the game for his team than any other player in the history of the NBA. What is not so well known, is that Jordan also missed more last-minute shots to lose the game for his team than any other player in the history of the game. What made him the greatest was not perfection, but a willingness to put himself on the line as a way of life. Did he suffer all those nights when he sent twenty thousand Bulls fans home heartbroken? Of course. But he was willing to look bad on the road to basketball immortality.”

And, finally, perhaps our most perfectly appropriate wisdom gem comes from Viktor Frankl who tells us: “What is to give light must endure the burning.”

Here’s to your Burning! :)

While I read to Emerson, I like to pause and check in with him on what’s happening.

Here’s our sequence that followed that passage:

Me: “What was happening to Harry’s heart?”

E: “It was beating really fast.”

Me: “Why?”

E: “He’s scared.”

Me: “Yep. That happens when you’re scared, huh? Then what did he do?”

E: “He looked back at the snake skin.”

Me: “Yep. What virtue is it when you are scared and still do what needs to get done?”

E: “Courage.”

Me: “Yep.” “I love you, buddy.”

So, in this scene, we have the goofball Lockhart—the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor with the bright white teeth and perfectly coiffed hair who pretends to be a hero but, when things get tough puts his hands up against his eyes to shield himself from danger. Unlike Lockhart, Harry is willing to open his eyes just enough to look at reality.

Of course, that’s ALWAYS a good practice.

We talked about this same basic idea in our Note on Harry’s adventures in Year 1. In that one, we riffed on the fact that most people were unwilling to say Voldemort’s name.

Whether we’re leaning in to Stoic wisdom via James Stockdale who tells us that we need to be willing to confront the brutal facts of reality or modern science that echoes that perspective and reminds us to “name it to tame it,” let’s open our eyes.

On that note: Anything you might be ignoring that you’d be wise to take a peek at?

P.S. “Blimey!”

Here we are after Harry and Ron successfully rescued Ginny Weasley from the Chamber of Secrets. (Well done!)

Dumbledore lets us know that even the best among us must sometimes eat their words—which makes me think of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his epic passage from Self-Reliance.

He tells us: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Now, obviously, not everyone who was misunderstood was great.

And, we want to develop the fundamentals of leadership which include doing what we way we will do and creating a level of trustworthy consistency.

And…

We need to be willing to be INconsistent. We need to be willing to “Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”

That’s a lot easier said than done. To be all-in intense on what you feel is true today and EQUALLY all-in intense on what you feel is true tomorrow EVEN IF it contradicts everything you just said today. That’s tough stuff!

That wisdom is buttressed by another gem from Emerson: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”

So… Back to Dumbledore eating his words.

Do you have any words you need to eat to avoid turning into a little hobgoblin?

That is such a gorgeous scene packed with wisdom. Where to begin?

First, how about the fact that one of Dumbledore’s qualities that makes him so wise is his CALMNESS. He keeps a balanced mind in the face of others’ turmoil.

Then there’s the fact that Harry has a bit of Voldemort in him. Just like we ALL do. None of us, of course, are perfectly good.

I’m reminded of our Note on The Effective Executive in which Peter Drucker tells us: “Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys.”

Then I think of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and this gem from Creativity: “Are there then no traits that distinguish creative people? If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it would be complexity. By this I mean that they show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes—instead of being an ‘individual,’ each of them is a ‘multitude.’ Like the color white that includes all the hues of the spectrum, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves.

These qualities are present in all of us, but usually we are trained to develop only one pole of the dialectic. We might grow up cultivating the aggressive, competitive side of our nature, and disdain or repress the nurturing, cooperative side. A creative individual is more likely to be both aggressive and cooperative, either at the same time or at different times, depending on the situation. Having a complex personality means being able to express the full range of traits that are potentially present in the human repertoire but usually atrophy because we think one or the other pole is ‘good,’ whereas the other extreme is ‘bad.’”

And, finally, we have the most important point of the passage. What determines our destiny? Far more than our abilities or our genetics, it’s all about our CHOICES.