Connecting The Dots of Healthcare

J.K Rowling’s latest and final installment in her Harry Potter juggernaut series will be out July 21. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows buzz is conjuring up images of who, as predicted by none other than J.K. Rowling herself, will die. So the big question is: COULD IT BE HARRY???? How could the hero die? Well, the same way some many mythological heroes die, at the pinnacle of success and triumph. Or will it be a happily ever after storybook ending, where the hero, and an uncertain, (but certainly less than at the end of The Half Blood Prince), number of his friends ride off in the sunset after vanquishing evil personified by Voldemort and his ilk. Volta de morteincidentally is portuguese for “return from the dead.” If Harry’s wandtwinis “return from the dead” what does that forebode for Harry?

So who cares? I mean really, it’s just a book.

Who cares????

Well, I DO!!!!! And so do the majority of people who have made Harry Potter the runaway ten-year phenomenon it has become. I remember buying my daughter Eliza her copy of  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and the ongoing race of reading-the-only-copy-of-the-newest-Harry-Potter-book in the family. I’d wait until whoever had possession of the book would fall asleep reading so I could get it and read it most of the night while they slept. (No patients were injured in the aftermath of a sleepless night reading Harry). We can’t wait to see how it all turns out…. and were horrified at Dumbledore’s death… and dread losing another friend(?s) we’ve known for years.

And how did this all start?

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.” 

Who would have believed that these innocuous words would initiate such transformative power. Is this great literature?

That’s not for me to judge, I’ll leave that to the “experts.” But one of my youngest daughter’s summer reading assignments for honors English was to read John Steinbeck’s classic, The Pearl. “Keno awakened in the near dark.”, is the opening line. Great literature? Again, not for me to judge. (But I did fall asleep re-reading this an adult, Harry keeps me page turning.) 

Is it because I have pedestrian tastes? Is it because Ms. Rowling performs MAGIC?

Yes, indeed. I believe Ms. Rowling performs VERY REAL MAGIC. The magic of a simple spell even Ron could remember without Hermione’s help.

Here’s the spell Ms. Rowling used:  Write well about a clever storyline, include great characters, and add messages that are timelessly relevant to both adults and children. Stir imagination, zig when they expect you to zag, and allow to percolate through society at a breakneck rate to inspire children, and adults, to turn off the TV for a bit.

“But it’s not great literature!” I’ve heard the elite snipe. Well, perhaps not, but I think even if not GREAT “Literature,” having the best selling book series of all time would surpass “great” and move to “Fantasmagoric Literature!”

Ms. Rowling isn’t magic, but she’s a magician none-the-less. A magician creates magic through a practiced and applied methodology to consistently create an expected, and totally surprising outcome. Unless of course you’re the magician. In that case, it’s simply what you intended to occur. Even if you are another magician, and know the trick, you still can applaud the mastery of the mechanics, but not so much the surprise of the effect it has on an uninitiated audience.

What we do, day to day, may not seem thunderous at the onset. But we all can learn to apply the “magic” of hard work, work done well, work performed to create a reality that isn’t an illusion at all, but real, tangible results, and voila, you can learn the “trick” too.  And you don’t even need to buy a magic wand from Ollivanders Wand Shop in Diagon Alley.

Besides, the wand chooses the wizard. Listen to the wand!