What Courage Would Your Suffering Unleash? -By Promise Eze

“By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew,” were the words of J.K. Rowling – the author whose book series has been translated into 73 languages, sold millions of copies and accrued over
$20 billion through movie adaptations and sponsorships. Her goal was to have the first Harry Potter book done by the time she returned from
Portugal, where she had gone to pick up a teaching job after the loss of her mother.

Things did not go as planned.

She did not make success in her first book. She ended up with a failed marriage and a baby daughter she now had to raise alone. She had hit rock bottom. She struggled with depression, raising a child on her own
and living off meager unemployment benefits.

After she sent her manuscript to 12 publishers and getting rejected by every single one, Rowling began to lose confidence in her book.

Finally an editor managed to go through her work. The work was published and the Harry Potter series has earned over $400 million in book sales, and the last movie alone earned $476 million dollars in
ticket sales. She is the UK’s best-selling living author, with sales in excess of £238 million. She was the first female to become a billionaire author. She is also a philanthropist. She has supported multiple charities, as well as launching her own charity, Lumos.

How you take handle your suffering will determine how you will end. Rowling had every reason to give up on her craft but she kept at it despite the insurmountable odds she faced. If she had given up nothing would be said about her today.

Challenges might be difficult to endure but they help shed our old skin to bring out the beauty in us. Sometimes, it is by suffering we know who we truly are. It is in suffering we get to understand the qualities we are made of.

Suffering is not an end to itself rather it is the means to an end. How you take handle your suffering will determine how your end will be. If you lose hope while you are battered with suffering you’ll not
end well. The day we die is not the day we stop breathing. It is the day we stop hoping. It is the day we allow our fears to blind us. I see suffering as a part of life and when it becomes our lot we should try not to despair. We should push forward even when the odds are not in our favour.

Challenges tend to produce two things in us: fear or courage. With fear you’ll certainly fall but with courage you’ll certainly sail through difficult moments. However the presence of courage is not the
absence of fear. Courage is the shadow that cover our fears.

Courage is the ability to do something that frightens one; it is bravery. It is the the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear.

Your suffering could be failing grades. You have tried so hard to succeed in your academics but you aren’t hitting your target. Maybe it’s a relationship that isn’t working well. Perhaps you’ve been diagnosed with a debilitating illness. These experiences are not palatable. They give you every reason to doubt your potential. They give you every reason to be anxious. But on the flip side they are the ingredients that could produce the best in you. J.K. Rowling bad experiences gave her the audacity to aim at the top. That is what suffering can do. That is the courage your suffering can unleash.