Advice on Life and Creative Integrity from Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson

Some great quotes by a great person.

My favourite:

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.

More here.

That is a quote to live by. Link doesn't work though..

D'oh! Fixed now. Thanks

Best comic ever. It seems like Watterson really lived by those words too. He stopped writing C[HTML_REMOVED]H when he felt he had said and done what he wanted. As successful as that comic was, he always refused to license it. A rare breed.

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.

This part I can relate to.

This part I can relate to.

It says children, which is the plural of child. Get cracking! ;)

It says children, which is the plural of child. Get cracking! ;)

You mean start sledging…

meh. somehow having ambitions is a bad thing?

how about this? live your life and stop pontificating on the lives of others. i love watterson for his comics, but this is just the same different shit that he lives by. thought he'd be smart enough to just quietly carry on knowing he doesn't need to explain himself and ridicule everyone else.

also easy to say when you're watterson. Most of western civilization that fits into the "low ambition, i just love myself" category are unemplyed deadbeats. Not surfers and artists working towards a personal, yet marginalized goal.

meh. somehow having ambitions is a bad thing?

how about this? live your life and stop pontificating on the lives of others. i love watterson for his comics, but this is just the same different shit that he lives by. thought he'd be smart enough to just quietly carry on knowing he doesn't need to explain himself and ridicule everyone else.

also easy to say when you're watterson. Most of western civilization that fits into the "low ambition, i just love myself" category are unemplyed deadbeats. Not surfers and artists working towards a personal, yet marginalized goal.

For someone deriding the intelligence of other people you think your comprehension would be good enough to see that he is not saying that having ambition is a bad thing but that you should create your own definition of success and recognise there are alternative goals. Your response is exactly the attitude he is warning about. Then again, perhaps my e-sarc detector is low.

meh. somehow having ambitions is a bad thing?

Can you point out where he says ambitions are a bad thing?

Regarding your use of the word "pontificating"… I don't think it means what you think it means.

Finally, I think you are confusing Watterson with somebody else.

/thank you

Excuse my misappropriation of the word "ambition".

I stand by the assertion that he's being pejorative, which is very very unlike him. Whats quoted there a snooty underhanded gesture suggesting that people who enter into a professional environment largely associated with promotion and increasing demands somehow are doing it for reasons they aren't fully cognizant of. The very fact that he said it means he thinks others aren't aware of the foundation of their ambitions. In particular he set up the dichotomy between being comfortable doing what you are doing Vs wanting to press forward only because of the subtle pressures of society. It's silly.

This same kind of argument takes place over and over again, be it about career ambition, eating right, exercise… Somehow people often think they are more aware of why someone does people do things anyone else. Is exercise vanity or health or just fun? Career ambition? True love for what you do? or is it something different? Maybe you are just subconsciously driven by, as he states it, "a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life"

I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying it's not very profound and id expect him to not feel compelled to set up such a thinly veiled self-righteous argument.

And like i said. It's easy to say that when you're Watterson. Who incidentally is local hero and lived 3 miles from where i live. It doesn't make me an expert. But did I grow up reading his everything every day all day, and could likely recite more of his strips from memory than the average cat.

Lots of love for the man. I just think that quoted statement is excrement.

Excuse my misappropriation of the word "ambition".

Done.

I stand by the assertion that he's being pejorative, which is very very unlike him. Whats quoted there a snooty underhanded gesture suggesting that people who enter into a professional environment largely associated with promotion and increasing demands somehow are doing it for reasons they aren't fully cognizant of. The very fact that he said it means he thinks others aren't aware of the foundation of their ambitions. In particular he set up the dichotomy between being comfortable doing what you are doing Vs wanting to press forward only because of the subtle pressures of society. It's silly.

This same kind of argument takes place over and over again, be it about career ambition, eating right, exercise… Somehow people often think they are more aware of why someone does people do things anyone else. Is exercise vanity or health or just fun? Career ambition? True love for what you do? or is it something different? Maybe you are just subconsciously driven by, as he states it, "a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life"

I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying it's not very profound and id expect him to not feel compelled to set up such a thinly veiled self-righteous argument.

And like i said. It's easy to say that when you're Watterson. Who incidentally is local hero and lived 3 miles from where i live. It doesn't make me an expert. But did I grow up reading his everything every day all day, and could likely recite more of his strips from memory than the average cat.

Lots of love for the man. I just think that quoted statement is excrement.

Before I reply in full, can you tell me if you hold his words and opinions in a higher regard than your own?

C [HTML_REMOVED] H best strip ever. Far Side 2nd best.