Posted by As we go about our careers, developing new skills and taking on new challenges, it can be very seductive to keep chasing the brass ring. Of course, you’ve worked hard to get to where you are and you don’t want to be complacent. Growth, change, challenge – these are important aspects of life, inside or outside of your career. But doing these things solely for their own sake isn’t going to lead to a better life.
The following is one of my favorite quotes of all time:
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.
– Bill Watterson, Kenyon College, 1990
You may recognize the name, Bill Watterson. He is the artist who came up with the famed Calvin & Hobbes comic strip. Watterson is a man who fought tooth and nail for his art, for his vision of what Calvin & Hobbes was supposed to be. He wasn’t complacent but neither did he succumb to the trap of climbing the ladder for the sake of climbing the ladder.
The cartoonist Gavin Aung Than used the above quotation on his website, Zen Pencils, in a splendid adaptation of Watterson’s style. Here it is below. I would highly encourage you to check out Zen Pencils. Mr. Than is on a hiatus at the moment but he has many other inspirational strips. Reading Watterson’s quote a second time in this gorgeous strip can not be a bad thing at all.
Cross-posted at PMP Lifestyle.
