[Reader-list] Speech by Bill Watterson

[Chandni Parekh]

>From Anahita

Speech by Bill Watterson
Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the graduating class

excerpts
***
..Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I
caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read
cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a
business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would
be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a
syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions
masquerading as simple business decisions.
To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you
need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that
popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much
time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a
$12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably
wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they
wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with
the reasons I draw cartoons.

Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and
you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and
rewards.

The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my
individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would
have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things.
My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass
production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become
committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would
turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the
meaning I'd need.
What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic
strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about
my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters
and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually
expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the
syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been
fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess,
where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of
conscience.

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives,
both personal and professional. 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.

Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical
school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of
starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own
tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is
another.

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.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep
climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and
what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and
I guarantee you'll hear about them.

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.
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings
may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask
yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful,
meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental
tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

With luck, you've also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight
or interest you'd never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you
may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and
spirit. 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.

I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your
achievement.


Bill Watterson

---

Calvin and Hobbes - http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/index.html