University of Chicago - So, Where Is Waldo, Really?

“Where’s Waldo?” is a fairly loved book by children, who immerse themselves into the search of a particular man with a red and white striped sweater. Time flies by, and sometimes people find themselves in a rage as they cannot find Waldo. When looking for Waldo, people go through similar patterns. They skim through the page full of different people, looking for the familiar color of red and white or for the familiar face. I did too, shoving my face into the page, eyes rolling around to find that one drawing. Frequently, you get fooled by other Waldo imposters with similar clothes or hairstyles and find yourself deeply irritated.

Interestingly, the seekers of Waldo do not seem to care about other characters or objects on the same page. There might be other interesting characters which are more favorable than Waldo, but nobody cares. Men might like a female character better than a male Waldo, but they too look for the long-chinned man with glasses. The obligation of having to find Waldo makes the view parochial and people become ignorant to themselves. A better question than “Where is Waldo?” will be “Who else is on this page?”

                  When people become prepossessed with an idea, they feel a sort of an obligation to meet the goals of that idea. Their views become narrowed down to a point to where they only look for it. Think about teens who are about to choose their majors. They usually have a predilection to a certain field of study. It is likely formed by the influence of parents or society. Adults pressure teens to find and appropriate major and society brainwashes teens about what is a favorable job and what is not. It is similar to the book asking children to specifically find Waldo. Due to the pressure and the shown social hierarchy of jobs, teens feel an obligation to choose some popular majors, such as medics, law, or economy. There is a whole scope of other majors and jobs to choose from, but teens altogether only look for a certain thing, Waldo. When they do not get to their goal, or find Waldo, they become outraged and depressed about it. Not only teens, but many people do feel negative feelings by not meeting other’s standards and expectations.

                  People should not be depressed by such outcomings, when in the first place they were not given a chance to look at the page thoroughly and find a character in their favor. If they were asked to find their favorite character on the page, people will have different answers of their own choice. Less people will be hopeless of not being able to fit themselves into a set cast. More people will not feel depressed, because they found the character they like. Of course, Waldo might be someone’s favorite character, but there is a higher chance that he is not considering there are about thousand other characters on the same page. Allow a person to navigate through diverse experience and pick the one that suits his or her character. Next time someone asks you to find Waldo, point at a character of preference and answer, “Here he is. That’s my Waldo.”