If you've never read any of the Harry Potter books, perhaps you should.
Now these (wildly popular) fantasy tales might not be your literary cup of tea. The same goes for the movies that the novels gave rise to.
Whether you like them or not though, you should read them, because the real story here is what they represent for the woman who wrote them, and, by extension, what they could represent for you.
Regardless of where you are in your life, did you ever get a nagging sense that there's got to be more to it than this? Many Baby Boomers, as they continue their journey through middle age, feel a lack of fulfillment to some degree.
Sometimes this is a result of financial stress. The economy has caused a lot of problems, which in turn have rippled through retirement savings, home values, jobs and any number of other things.
On the other hand, the lack of fulfillment is often simply due to the realization that there is more to life than work. This often occurs when people work at a job but not their passion.
They build up personal images of who they are, often based on what they do. And if they don't really like what they do all that much-hey, it's a job after all-sometimes that means they don't really like their lives all that much either.
When she started writing Harry Potter, that's where the author, J.K. Rowling, was in her life.
She had worked as a teacher upon leaving college, but it really wasn't her calling. She got married, had a daughter, and six months later, separated from her husband, leaving her job in the process. All of a sudden Rowling was an unemployed, single mom, now forced to live off of public assistance-welfare. And then her mom died.
Talk about feeling unfulfilled. Rowling says that she saw herself "as the biggest failure I knew." Clearly it was time for a change.
Her failure however had a positive effect however. Rowling stripped away everything that was not essential to her perception of who she was. She boiled everything down to reality and began to focus on what she realized was her life's work.
The idea for Harry Potter-a young boy who attends a school of wizardry-had come to her one day while riding a train. Her big idea turned into her big passion, and once she liberated that passion from the shackles of her stressed out life, she was able to focus on it.
And focus on it she did-the Harry Potter series has sold more than 400 million copies, and in the process Rowling has amassed a net worth of over $1 billion.
The lesson here should be obvious.
Life comes at you - that's a given. But each one of us has been blessed with the power to deal with it. Doing that effectively, however, requires some effort, discipline and perhaps some discomfort.
Spend some time with yourself to figure out who you really are and what you really want. Strip away the inessential, and face reality with a clean slate. Find your passion, and follow your heart.
Maybe you won't become a billionaire in the process. Maybe you will. But you will be happy.
