“The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”
I am sure that in your life you will have felt at times that deep deep need for inspiration. And if inspiration did not come what was it? Writer’s block? Some other Block? Whatever! The fickle gods of mental stimulation just had it in for us!
As teachers if you are doing your job effectively you will have to have demanded inspiration of your students. And if it just does not come for them? What is it? Should it just be “Suck it up Buttercup”? Helping your students with that problem is I guess the challenge in teaching. And that is a challenge in our personal and professional lives as well. Maybe empathy is the most meaningful force here!
If comic strips/cartoons are not meant to be taken seriously then why do these daily “throw away” forms of light entertainment burrow into our subconscious with such tenacity? The creators who generate them seem to have the talent and inspiration to appeal to important even essential instincts in our lives.
Bill Watterson the creator of the above Calvin and Hobbes strip gave the commencement address at his alma mater Kenyon College in May of 1990. At that time Bill Watterson was celebrated and hyper hyper-successful. He seemed to have inspiration in spades! Then in 1995 he just “dropped out”. He just left it all behind. Perhaps some of his 1990 Kenyon College Commencement Address gives an important clue to his motivation as well as what was the basic source of his inspiration:
“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…”.
Must we need to be happy doing our own work for inspiration to successfully impact our lives? Here is where you can find more information on Bill Watterson’s Commencement address:
The facts of what happened are explained in the Wikipedia article about Bill Watterson. They may seem strange and yet to me so understandable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson
let’s hear it for the “Stupid Field”.
Allow me to quote W.H. Auden:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
