A brief but fascinating local-newspaper interview with the 51 year-old reclusive Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist, believed to be the first in 15 years, since he retired.
Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved -- and are still grieving -- when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?
This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say.
It's always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I'd be agreeing with them.
I think some of the reason "Calvin and Hobbes" still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.
I've never regretted stopping when I did.
The interview inspired me to learn more about Watterson. I began by reading his Wikipedia page, which then inspired me to hunt down his 1990 commencement speech at his alma matter, Kenyon College. The speech is a bit too "Boo Industry" for my tastes, and the transcript is sloppily done, but it was nonetheless the best ~10 minutes I spent this week. I really think this ranks up there with the Gettysburg commencement address. Below are a few sections I really liked.
It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness.
We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery -- it recharges by running.
Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems. For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity.
I eventually admitted that I didn't have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics.
It's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.
To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work. Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work.
We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential -- as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you've learned, but in the questions you've learned how to ask yourself.
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Related:
Ben Casnocha points out the contradiction in Steve Jobs' commencement speech.
