(Check out part one of "SevenLife Lessons" from last week here.)
5. You will be okay.
The advice I gleaned from The Order of the Phoenix was the hardest advice for me to take. My favorite character in the Harry Potter universe gave me the advice that, for the longest time, I refused to take. She said, "The things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end—if not always in the way we expect." The advice seems simple enough, right? Just let go and all will be right in the end. This was tough for me to swallow. As someone who has never handled loss in a healthy way, I refused to believe that moving on from loss was as simple as she made it seem. I very much sided with Harry on this one. He knew that moving on from losing Sirius just wasn't possible. I agreed with him wholeheartedly. Until I didn't. Over the past year I have had to deal with losing my aunt to alcoholism, losing two of my favorite dogs to cancer and having to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't save my relationship. It wasn't until a few weeks after my partner of one year decided it was time for us to see other people that I really started to relate to Luna. She was an outsider, she was weird and quirky and she was right. Losing the love that my partner gave to me came back as fiercely and as warm as it had ever been, but not from him. It came from my friends and family who supported me through that loss. Losing someone will never be easy, but as long as you can embrace that loss and try your best to move on, good things will shine through the pain. It could take only weeks or it could take years, but that loss won't consume you forever. You will be okay.
6. You can't help the family you were born into.
The Half-Blood Prince made me realize something important. You can't help the family you are born into, but you can choose to be a part of a better one. This impacted my life because I saw how I could have turned out if I hadn't started to make my own choices and opinions. I made the realization while Dumbledore was trying to convince Draco Malfoy to spare him and leave Voldemort's service. We see Draco wavering, but he ultimately knows that he has no choice and that Voldemort will kill him, and his family, if he is unable to do as he is told. I saw Draco's struggle and realized that he really didn't have a choice in how he was raised. He was raised to be prejudiced and hateful and blindly follow in his parents footsteps. So naturally, when Voldemort returned to power, Draco was brought into his service without question. I think that if he was allowed to make his own decisions and form his own opinions, Draco's life could have ended up quite differently. However, I am in no way saying that how you are raised is your fault. Take Draco, for example. He was brought up in a terrible household with absolutely no say in his own upbringing. But you, all of you, are very capable of making your own decisions. So my advice to myself and to any others reading this is to form your own opinions. Don't blindly follow what others are saying and doing and don't let your family make decisions for you. You are not your parents. You are individually and beautifully unique. Don't let that go to waste.
7. Bravery may be hard, but not impossible.
As someone with social anxiety, bravery has never been a strong suit of mine. I suffer through presentations and public speaking, never speak to strangers unless absolutely necessary and very rarely stand up to bullies. I remember reading the scene of the battle of Hogwarts in The Deathly Hallows and being amazed at the amount of bravery that was shown. Some things were as simple as Ron wanting to tell the house elves to get out and others were as amazingly brilliant as Neville standing up to Lord Voldemort himself. Now, to anyone that knows me personally, they know that I have always seen myself as the Neville Longbottom of my friend group. Seeing Neville grow from this small timid boy into one of the bravest characters of the entire series shocked me, to say the least. If he could grow up and become this brave confident young person, why can't I? I know that bravery may seem simple; you either have it or you don't. But the truth is that, while you may not have bravery all the time, you can still be brave. You can still do things that you would never normally do. So, if you have anxiety like me or you just never put yourself out there like brave people do, don't fret. It may take us a little longer to get to that bravery, but we are brave nonetheless.
In a small way, this article was to convince my readers to go out and buy the Harry Potter series. In a bigger way, this is my explanation of what the Harry Potter books mean to me. But altogether, this article is written in hopes that some of the advice I was able to glean from the books may rub off onto you and help you in some way. Thanks for writing the series J.K. Rowling. You changed my life.
