Okay I love reading Harry Potter. I have read all seven books many many times and watched all eight movies many times over as well. My daughter and I have lengthy and impassioned discussions about them.
There, I said it, the skeleton is out, so to speak - from the cupboard under the stairs.
But in my defence, it is not just the childlike wonder of escaping the boring world of Muggles into the captivating wizarding world once in a while. Or that there is a certain poetic justice in seeing a wounded and scarred little boy becoming The Chosen One. Of course not! Ok maybe all that. Just a little. For those of you who are decidedly unenchanted by all things magical, before you get all disdainful and hippogriffy, stay with me. I do have a few grown up reasons for liking Harry Potter too.
You see, I work in the field of learning - I live and breathe it day in and day out - and there's a lot to be learnt in these books, at least the first few. Learning that ought to be out there in the Muggle world in schools and in organizations.
For one thing, Voldemort and Harry are in a lot of ways two sides of the same coin, just like we all are. The final horcrux that Harry has to destroy before killing Voldemort was the one that was within himself. This means that Harry and his friends need much more than just book learning. What is needed first and foremost is self-awareness. Nowhere in all the curricula that I have seen is there a course called Self-Awareness. At least not self-awareness in the ways that count.
Again, stop already with the smouldering basilisk eyes that threaten to burn me to oblivion. There's a point to all of this I promise you. I'm getting there.
Take the Mirror of Erised. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Erised is Desire spelled backwards, a little word trick that helped get my attention from the get go not to mention that seemingly meaningless gibberish written on it - Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. No this is not Parsel Tongue or any other weird magical language. This is simply the phrase 'I show not your face but your heart's desire' written backwards. So the Mirror of Erised shows you nothing more and nothing less than your heart's deepest desire. Harry peeps in and sees his dead parents; Ron sees himself as the head boy. The happiest people, according to wise old Dumbledore, see themselves just the way they are. For them, the mirror of Erised functions like a normal mirror. It gives you neither knowledge nor wisdom, and people have wasted away in front of it, says Dumbledore. Now I'm not suggesting that we pine away in front of it, but wouldn't it be helpful to know what our desires are?
I wouldn't call myself the happiest person in the world, but my Mirror of Erised has always been very close to a normal mirror, which interestingly was never considered a virtue. "You're too content with things. You're too happy with the status quo. You're not ambitious enough. If you just put your mind to it..." were all common exasperated refrains that I have heard all through my school and college days. Come to think of it, I heard it from my boss last week! Oh well, I always knew that whenever my stuff was not in fashion - clothes, ideas, books - if I left it alone long enough, it would be. One day. Who am I to argue with Dumbledore after all?
That was about the heart's deepest desires, now about the soul's darkest fears...
Smartly enough, the Hogwarts curriculum involves putting students face to face with their deepest fears and equipping them to handle them using Boggarts, a safe sandbox environment in which to practise for the real thing. Turns out that Ron's is spiders, Harry's is dementors that bring him head on with the worst horrors of his life. Do you know what your greatest fear is? And what is the Riddikulus spell that you would conjure up to dispel it? Wouldn't it make sense to think about your fear and practise conquering it before it socked you in the jaw when you least expected it?
What about the weapons you have at hand to achieve those dreams or dispel those fears? What form does your patronus take when the dementors threaten to suck out all happiness from the deepest recesses of your soul? Is your patronus a person, or an animal, or a thing, or an abstract concept? Do you know what it is, so you can take strength and comfort from it? Do you know what you can do to make its charm strong and invincible and help it to protect you?
See - I told you there were some wise and grown up points in there somewhere. I can almost feel a long grey beard coming on! But now that I think of it, maybe I wasn't entirely truthful about my mirror of Erised. Maybe if I looked deep enough, I would find something else. Maybe I would see a pair of woollen socks. After all, it has been getting rather chilly in Bangalore!
There, I said it, the skeleton is out, so to speak - from the cupboard under the stairs.
But in my defence, it is not just the childlike wonder of escaping the boring world of Muggles into the captivating wizarding world once in a while. Or that there is a certain poetic justice in seeing a wounded and scarred little boy becoming The Chosen One. Of course not! Ok maybe all that. Just a little. For those of you who are decidedly unenchanted by all things magical, before you get all disdainful and hippogriffy, stay with me. I do have a few grown up reasons for liking Harry Potter too.
You see, I work in the field of learning - I live and breathe it day in and day out - and there's a lot to be learnt in these books, at least the first few. Learning that ought to be out there in the Muggle world in schools and in organizations.
For one thing, Voldemort and Harry are in a lot of ways two sides of the same coin, just like we all are. The final horcrux that Harry has to destroy before killing Voldemort was the one that was within himself. This means that Harry and his friends need much more than just book learning. What is needed first and foremost is self-awareness. Nowhere in all the curricula that I have seen is there a course called Self-Awareness. At least not self-awareness in the ways that count.
Again, stop already with the smouldering basilisk eyes that threaten to burn me to oblivion. There's a point to all of this I promise you. I'm getting there.
Take the Mirror of Erised. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Erised is Desire spelled backwards, a little word trick that helped get my attention from the get go not to mention that seemingly meaningless gibberish written on it - Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. No this is not Parsel Tongue or any other weird magical language. This is simply the phrase 'I show not your face but your heart's desire' written backwards. So the Mirror of Erised shows you nothing more and nothing less than your heart's deepest desire. Harry peeps in and sees his dead parents; Ron sees himself as the head boy. The happiest people, according to wise old Dumbledore, see themselves just the way they are. For them, the mirror of Erised functions like a normal mirror. It gives you neither knowledge nor wisdom, and people have wasted away in front of it, says Dumbledore. Now I'm not suggesting that we pine away in front of it, but wouldn't it be helpful to know what our desires are?
I wouldn't call myself the happiest person in the world, but my Mirror of Erised has always been very close to a normal mirror, which interestingly was never considered a virtue. "You're too content with things. You're too happy with the status quo. You're not ambitious enough. If you just put your mind to it..." were all common exasperated refrains that I have heard all through my school and college days. Come to think of it, I heard it from my boss last week! Oh well, I always knew that whenever my stuff was not in fashion - clothes, ideas, books - if I left it alone long enough, it would be. One day. Who am I to argue with Dumbledore after all?
That was about the heart's deepest desires, now about the soul's darkest fears...
Smartly enough, the Hogwarts curriculum involves putting students face to face with their deepest fears and equipping them to handle them using Boggarts, a safe sandbox environment in which to practise for the real thing. Turns out that Ron's is spiders, Harry's is dementors that bring him head on with the worst horrors of his life. Do you know what your greatest fear is? And what is the Riddikulus spell that you would conjure up to dispel it? Wouldn't it make sense to think about your fear and practise conquering it before it socked you in the jaw when you least expected it?
What about the weapons you have at hand to achieve those dreams or dispel those fears? What form does your patronus take when the dementors threaten to suck out all happiness from the deepest recesses of your soul? Is your patronus a person, or an animal, or a thing, or an abstract concept? Do you know what it is, so you can take strength and comfort from it? Do you know what you can do to make its charm strong and invincible and help it to protect you?
See - I told you there were some wise and grown up points in there somewhere. I can almost feel a long grey beard coming on! But now that I think of it, maybe I wasn't entirely truthful about my mirror of Erised. Maybe if I looked deep enough, I would find something else. Maybe I would see a pair of woollen socks. After all, it has been getting rather chilly in Bangalore!
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