Where is Bill Watterson?

Tony's assorted thoughts on navigating midlife without losing one's sense of humour

Dolphins in the Doldrums

Mr. PHILIP. He wrote his name on the board and proceeded to pronounce it many times over “Mister FiLp. FiLp… Not filiPP, FiLp…” 

It was zero hour in seventh standard, and to this date I am not sure why Mr. Philip, a Malayalee brother who spent time in Canada had come over to our class for those 35 minutes and never again. Perhaps the school had deemed it necessary to give a quick jolt to our very Mallu pronunciations where anything with an “rs” in it automatically gets substituted by a “zh”. Picking up on the theme of shock and awe, Mr FiLp wrote “BOMB” on the blackboard. It’s pronounced “Bom… Bom… Bom… not “bomBu”.  

It was an amusing session, and I can’t be sure, but in my memory, 25 years since then, I think it was Mr FiLp who mentioned the phrase “Dolphins in the doldrums” referring to creatures who would find a way to be happy even in the most treacherous ocean. A trick my memory definitely played on me is the association of the word “Doldrums” with a turbulent, tempestuous sea. Turns out, the doldrums, unlike dhol drums, are not loud and noisy. They’re stagnant and calm. They are “the Intertropical Convergence Zone, known by sailors as the doldrums or the calms because of its monotonous windless weather.” 

This wouldn’t have made sense to a 11 year old. Isn’t it much harder when there is a lot happening and you have to react to situations of high pressure? Aren’t take offs and landings the hard part with cruise control in between? The 36 year old me knows now. The set routine of growing up is much easier. With definite targets and goals, you know what needs to be done. But the doldrums of your life come with no one to answer to but yourself. It creeps upon you slowly, but inevitably with questions of purpose and meaning as you run on the same treadmill day after day.

As it turns out, life is not at its hardest when you learn cursive, but when you learn it’s recursive.

Why Bill Watterson?

It’s easy enough to navigate the doldrums by defining yourself as the work you get paid for. For me, it’s enviable even, but simply not viable. And therefore, Bill Watterson. A person consciously walked away from the riches on offer at the top of his career, to lead a happy life elsewhere. In his own words…

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…

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.

In an era of content glut, where empty words keep getting repeated with immaculate confidence, and the vacuuous content finds us like official emails at our best, worst, and everything in between, what would Bill Watterson have written? When the Outlook is bleak, Bill Watterson is the anti-LinkedIn. And I would like to find him - the quiet happiness that does not need to create content for validation or self-advancement, but an important voice for those of us who seek more meaning.

But what is this really about?

To start off with, this is just another personal blog. A way for me to write more, and hopefully challenge myself to channel my own life’s meaning. A space where l try to find my own Bill Watterson - navigating the doldrums without losing my sense of humour. Equipped with the knowledge that notytony is cringe, but philosophy is cringier, this is where I’ll pen down my thoughts. Somewhere along the way it might turn into something more, or it might die out in two months when a new project catches my fancy. Till next time, thank you for reading my substack, and humouring my presumption that everyone is the same at this stage - sab stuck?