Emma Watson, the actress who brought Hermione Granger to life in the Harry Potter films, is now starring the in Darren Aronofsky’s adaption of the biblical story of Noah. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, she described herself as someone who is “more spiritual than specifically religious.” She went on to say, “I had a sense that I believed in a higher power, but that I was more of a Universalist. I see that there are these unifying tenets between so many religions.” So here’s my question, in this trend toward a more generalized belief in God rather than adherence to a particular tradition, is Emma a representative of the...

Mistakes. We all make them. And, by and large, we all dread them. I get that. I hate making mistakes. They make me feel foolish and incompetent. They undermine my confidence and make it harder to reach my goals. They feel like setbacks, if not out and out failures. And sometimes those mistakes are costly or painful or both, to me and to others. Mistakes are therefore something to be avoided. That’s the common narrative we tell ourselves about mistakes, and there is something deeply and obviously true about that story. But there’s another story as well. And that is that mistakes, if we pay attention to them, have a great deal to teach us....