Calvin and Hobbes is a cartoon strip that I real started reading a year or so ago. I really don’t remember what made me start reading this thing but I know now I am hooked. I am so badly hooked, I actually get a high of sorts on reading this stuff. I am writing this as I was reading the great adventures of the 6 year old boy and his tiger which is a doll to all but him. To him, it is a ferocious tiger, his best friend, his constant companion and his permanent ally against the monsters under the bed.
What I love about this character is the mindset of this kid. 6 years old and ready to own the world. I am not generally a kind of person who says, “I wish….”. No, I never say or think like that and I control myself as much as I can. But then only when I read this, I repeatedly get the feeling, “Wish I had a dynamic and energetic, unsteady, unstable, atrocious, unreasonable, fertile, imaginative, stubborn, never-say-die mind like Calvin.”
The way this kid’s mind works is just brilliant. I must say that it is just beyond godlike. The way his imagination drifts along has never ceased to bring smiles to my mind. Small things, things so small have never even noticed them, these things become the biggest source of ideas and arguments for Calvin. Take this example.
“Calvin (to Miss Wormwood, in the middle of the class) : If ignorance is bliss, this lesson would appear to be a deliberate attempt on your part to deprive me of happiness, the pursuit of which is my unalienable right according to the Declaration of Independence. I therefore assert my patriotic prerogative not to know this material.”
In this fast paced and weird lifestyle of ours, very few of us may even think along these lines. Well, agreed that these thoughts have no productive results , but isn’t it just fun to think like this? To have a really new and fresh approach to all things? See things the way we have never yet seen them? Take this example,
“ (Calvin, Frustrated with school) For some reason, they’d rather teach us stuff that any fool can look up in a book.”
So true, isn’t it?
In fact I am so obsessed with this kid, that the very image of this kid sitting on the swing in his school after all the kids have left at the end of recess bell, so that he can have some quality time with himself, brings to my mind a vision. A vision of freedom. Freedom from everything, from authority, accountability, freedom from responsibilities and everything that ties you down to this mundane and boring existence. Nothing except you and all your thoughts . just you and your fertile and vivid imagination and all that comes in your imagination. I call this world Calvinworld.
Well, we all know that Calvinworld and the kind of life associated with Calvinworld is just impossible. Other `thinkers’ will tell you that life is life because of all the challenges it throws at you, because of all the responsibilities that it weighs you down with. Well, maybe they are right. But you know what, all said and done, I still love to think otherwise. I know that my future life will never be in that kind of a Calvinworld. But I see myself, alive (hopefully) at 60 with a good life behind me, one filled with challenges and responsibilities and all that tie a man down, but then In the end, I am sure, that I will still dream of this world in which Calvin lives. I will imagine myself in that world. With nothing to stop me expect death and the extent of my imagination.
“The problem with people is they don’t look at the big picture. Eventually we’re each going to die, our species will go extinct, the sun will explode and the universe will collapse. Existence is not only temporary, it is also pointless!”
It’s a magical world out there…
In itself, the words don’t mean anything to me. But then when there is a picture of Calvin and Hobbes walking in the snow with Hobbes carrying a snow sledge in his hands, smiling and walking to find the biggest slope they can to try the next breathtaking session of high speed sledging, along with the words’ It’s a Magical World Out There’ on top of the picture, the words get a very special and different meaning. They mean not just that there is a real world out there waiting for you. It also means that it is waiting there for YOU. For you to go and enjoy life in it, for you to have fun in it. For you to live out your fantasies in it. For you to try snow sledging in it. Life is full of hope.
Calvin moving forward thru the snow, all dressed up for another winter full of snow and snowmen.
It gives you a feeling of optimism. Never ending curiosity and an imagination with the biggest wings ever. This is heaven. This is utopia. For me, the very thought is more than enough to make my day.
