If you are anything like me, you are an avid Harry Potter fan: you've read the books more times than you care to admit, quote the movies religiously, and can list all of the chapters in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" from memory.
If you are more sane and less of a freak than me, you can still recognize the valuable life lessons that "Harry Potter" has to offer. The coming-of-age series is known for its commentary on racism, feminism, good and evil, and many other issues faced in everyday life.
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In order to spare you from a never-ending spiel about all of the things I love about Harry Potter, I've compiled a list of some of the valuable life lessons we can learn from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone".
1. You can't outrun your problems.
Yes Vernon Dursley, we're looking at you. As much as we'd all love to force our families to temporarily move into a remote shack with limited food and no heat, it's not a very practical life decision. While running away from your problems may seem like the most viable solution, it eventually will come back to bite you and give your child a pig's tail. If the beginning of "Harry Potter" teaches us anything, it's that it's important to always confront what you're dealing with head on.
2. First impressions aren't always what they seem.
As humans, we put a lot of stock into our first impressions of others. While they sometimes can be accurate, it is important to remember that our initial perception of someone isn't always who they actually are. Take it from Harry and Ron -- if they would've stuck with their primary reactions to Hermione, there would be a lot fewer books... because they'd be dead.
3. Most people are not wholly good or wholly evil -- there is usually a gray area.
Harry spends the entirety of the first book convinced that Snape is trying to kill him and steal the sorcerer's stone. While we don't learn too much about Snape in this first book, we do find out that all the times Harry thought Snape was trying to kill him he was actually keeping him alive. However there is no denying that Snape isn't the ideal person to interact with, which illustrates the idea that no person is fully good or fully bad. And seriously Harry, before you accuse Snape of trying to kill you, do us a favor and read the seventh book. RIP Alan Rickman.
4. Two-faced is one of the worst things a person can be.
While most people do not have an evil being emerging from the back of their head -- at least from my experience -- the Quirrell/Voldemort dynamic shows how dangerous it is to not be your true self. It is a common tactic for people to hide behind a front, or become a chameleon and act differently depending on their audience, but take a lesson from Quirrell: if you continually act differently in different situations, you lose who you are -- and eventually an 11-year-old boy will kill you with his bare hands.
5. And lastly... There is a reason girls don't go to the bathroom alone.
It's so we don't get brutally murdered by a massive troll.
