Life is a school and we are its students. As long as we are alive, we keep learning. Well most people do anyways! Life has its own strange and mysterious ways of teaching us lessons at the end of which, you can’t help but smile and shake your head.
Today I’m going to talk about some really important life lessons that you can learn from the wonderful and magical world of Harry Potter. Though a fictitious world, the lessons are as real as it gets.
Many of us grew up with Harry Potter and his world has been a very special part of our lives while doing so. His journey through thick and thin has managed to impart a great deal of wisdom that we can all learn from. So, let’s dig in.
1. Face Your Fears
It might be easy to live in the comfort zone but every now and then life tosses you out of it. It is in these types of situations that you must face your fears. Sometimes it becomes inevitable to get out of certain situations and all you can do is confront your fears with all the courage you can muster up.
Facing your fears not only makes you stronger, more experienced but it helps you realise what you are truly made of. Once you’ve conquered your fears, you will realise that it was the fear of fear itself that you were fearful of.
In the books, we see several examples of this. Ron having to deal with his fear of spiders to get out of the forbidden forest alive, Harry having to face the Dementors to save his soul and countless others. We all need to defeat the dementors in our lives.
2. Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover
When Ron and Harry met Hermione, they thought she was intolerable and never imagined being friends with here, let alone best friends. And we all thought that Professor Snape was a miserable man who was out there to do harm to Harry. But we were wrong.
Hagrid appeared to be a towering giant but he was kind and gentle. Sirius Black who looked like an escaped prisoner, turned out to be Harry’s godfather!
We never know what a person truly is like, behind the guarded exterior that we have all put up in response to this cunning world. We must approach everyone with an open mind. Don’t make snap judgements about anyone.
3. Friends Can Get You Through Anything
Friendship has been a big theme throughout Harry’s story. Since day one, we are taken on an adventure with the 3 friends, who remained with each other in happiness and in sorrow. Even when death was upon them, they greeted it together.
We all have friends in life and more often than not we rely on them to be our support system, because lets face it, life throws a lot of lemons at you and sometimes two hands aren’t enough to make lemonade out of them!
Cherish your friends, let them know how important they are to you. You will be doing this at the risk of getting made fun of by them but that is their job, isn’t it?
4. Sometime We Have To Fight Our Battles Alone
Although we may have the support of our friends in our lives, there are times when we just have to get through situations all by ourselves. In such testing times, keep faith that you will get to see the light at the end of the tunnel even though you don’t have any idea how.
We see this several times with Harry. Ron and Hermione were always with him every step of the way, but when he had to go one on one with the dark lord, he was alone. Sometimes, we can’t risk putting our friends in danger and sometimes it may not even be their fights to fight.
5. Love Is Stronger Than Hatred
One could argue that the story of Harry began the night his parents sacrificed their lives to save him. It was his mother’s love for him that guarded little Harry against the dark and powerful magic of Lord Voldemort.
This has been showcased time and again when Harry, out of all odds, has an upper hand over the dark lord himself. That’s because he is not fighting out of hatred but to protect his loved ones. He was even ready to sacrifice himself.
In our lives too, if we let go of all the hatred, the world would be a much better place to live in. Hatred can be very toxic and you end up doing more harm to yourself than to the one you hate.
6. Sometimes All You Need Is A Good Laugh
Remember the duo Fred and George Weasley? They are such lively characters who just enjoy every moment of life. They don’t have a single care in the world and have dedicated their lives to make their’s and everyone else’s lives more “eventful”.
Now, I am not saying that you need to put up a smile on your face 24 X 7 because we are humans and we just can’t be happy all the time. Everything has limits you know! But when times are rough and the going gets tough, we should be able to have a laugh or two and not take life so seriously.
"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." - Professor Dumbledore
7. Magic Exists
Though not in the literal sense of the word, magic does exist in our world and we get to experience it everyday. Be it the music we love that transports us into an another dimension, or the laugh of a baby or even a smile of your loved one, magic can be found in the people, places and things all around us.
It is really upto ourselves to decide how much of this magic we want to experience in our lives. Life after all, if you look at it, is magic!