Choosing What Is Right Over What Is Easy

Sarah Adams
Sep 5, 2018 · 4 min read

How Harry Potter has helped me to choose what is right.

“It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” — J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter has shaped who I am today. I think often about how much of an impact the Harry Potter books have had on my life, and where I might have been without them.

I started reading Harry Potter when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade I believe, 2001–2003. Since then I have read each book over 30 times. I know many lines by heart, and often quote them before Jim Dale while listening to the audiobook (hehe).

Growing up, the world of Harry Potter offered a calm and warm alternative to the somewhat cold and hostile environment in which I grew up. I dove into the books and began listening to them on loop starting in middle school (2005). This is how I’ve come to read the books so many times.

I am still listening to the books on repeat — Harry Potter is family at this point. And I still get so much out of every read.

But over the last four or five years especially, the books have come to mean even more to me.

I am a Software Engineer at this point in my life. I have overcome a lot of adversity to get and stay here, and I am better for it.

About four years ago, my frustration with our industry — its discriminatory practices against minorities, it’s lack of care for humans inside our industry and out — reached a kind of breaking point, and a Harry awoke inside of me.

I began speaking out publicly against discrimination against women in programming. I was so ready to fight for justice. I was ready to do whatever I could to help my fellow women in the industry.

I spent weeks emailing with the lead of a particular programming language, Go, trying to convince him to adopt a code of conduct, trying to convince him that all was not fine in the Go community, not for everyone.

After the Code of Conduct battle (golang.org/conduct ;)), I ended up creating a non-profit, Women Who Go (womenwhogo.org). I worked tirelessly for women in the Go community, for no reward other than the pleasure and joy of helping other people. I worked because I could, and because it was the right thing to do.

I put on over forty events in San Francisco to help out women in the Go community. I helped over thirty chapters get started around the world.

I felt for each woman in the community, and I was there for them, whatever they needed.

“It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

This quote came to mean the most to me as I was working as a software engineer at Google. I was constantly flabbergasted by the lack of care my fellow engineers, and my superiors, had for others.

At Google, there is no incentive for employees to listen to minorities, to learn about cultural differences, to understand coworkers who appear different. There is no incentive even for HR to help employees reporting discrimination or harassment. There is no incentive, as I found out personally last year, for anyone to help an employee being targeted and threatened by external political groups simply for having the audacity to be a minority engineer.

In such a world where ignorance is encouraged and empathy is largely seen as a waste of energy, we must rely on our own internal compass to decide what is right.

Conformity is easy. And it is the path that most Googlers take.

“It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

This quote helped me remember to stay true to my truth and to myself during my tenure at Google, and to always stand up for others in pain, even when social conformity was begging me not to.

And while I was at Google, and still today, I have this to hold onto. While folks were doing all in their power to stifle me, to remain ignorant, or to turn their backs, I could hold onto the fact that given a choice between helping another and personal gain, I have always chosen to help another. My choices make up who I am. My choices make me proud to be me. And I can hold onto that, no matter what.

“It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

This quote is the sticker on the back of my laptop, reminding me every day to choose to do what I know is right. Because our choices make up what we are. Because at the end of the day, all we will have to hold onto is ourselves — the choices we’ve made, the people we‘ve helped.

With love,

Sarah

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