Autocracy

Hello everyone. Today I wanted to talk about something a bit more personal and not related to the comic. About two years ago, in March, I wrote a deviantART post titled ‘Respect Yourself’. The gist of that post was basically that you shouldn’t fill your life with meaningless assets, that the friends you surround yourself with have a massive impact on you and you should be mindful of who exactly are you letting near you and so on.

Over the last two months I’ve been meditating on this topic. As you’re no doubt aware, the entire period from late December to the start of February was not exactly the happiest time of my life. During great times of strife, we as humans have a tendency to seriously rethink the very nature of our enterprise; who we are and what is our place in the world. We reminisce on the path that lead us here and try to see what went wrong, what went right and if the pickle we’ve found ourselves in truly is our fault. And if it is, are we happy with it? Can you honestly say the suffering you’re enduring is something you’ve willingly earned?

To me, the answer to all of these questions was yes. Aside from the unfortunate nature of the scam, I felt like the hardships of the last quarter of the year were an earnest consequence of my way of life. I’ve stressed before that I thought myself deeply dedicated to my craft. I’ve used the resources available at my disposal to the best of my ability and whether you agree or not, I think I’ve managed to carve out maybe not a great living, but at least a secure living. There were missteps along the way, but I find my failures to be a byproduct of decisions that, in the long run, I am not the slightest bit ashamed of.

When I think of myself from the last year, the biography of Motecuhzoma II comes to my mind. For those of you at home, he was the last sovereign of the Aztec Empire before Hernan Cortez’s arrival in the New World and the subsequent subjugation of the natives. On the surface level, Motecuhzoma seems like a failure; he let the Spanish into the capital, he let them imprison himself and his court inside the palace. To our knowledge, he is the only ruler that the Mexica revoked of their own accord, only so he could die disgraced at the hands of the Spanish.

The thing is, Motecuhzoma did everything right to the best of his ability, given his situation. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to point out his mistakes, but you have to keep in mind he dealt with a truly one in a lifetime event. From his point of view, the Spanish could already be onto him and arrived confident in their ability to conquer and destroy his kingdom. In reality, the Spanish force which landed on the shores of North America counted less than a hundred men and was by no means equipped to wage a full scale war. Being cautious and diplomatic is exactly what a thoughtful ruler would do in such a scenario, even if in this particular case it was the wrong call.

The point I’m trying to make is that you should not be too hard on yourself for the mishaps of your past. You’ll never play your hand right every time; sometimes the fate deals you a blow cruel enough to shaken you to your very core. Of course the ways in which you deal with adversity are going to determine your longevity on a long enough timeline, but by staying true to the innermost principles of your heart, you’ll find yourself never lacking in determination.

Your ability to make it through the darkest of nights is predicated on your strength of character. In order to cultivate said strength, you have to have something that you’ll be willing to endure any hardship for. There are things about you which you must recognize as your unique assets; something that you, and only you, can bring to the table; something that I can’t get elsewhere. If you are a fledgling artist, this might be a tough nut to crack. You’re probably thinking, “why even bother? There are so many much more talented people out there.” You have to keep in mind that the flaws in your work don’t equate to mediocre art. There’ll always be something you can improve on, but your consistency as an artist matters infinitely more than your ability to name or draw every muscle in the human body.

In other words, be proud of who you are. And work diligently on becoming an even better version of yourself. Not because who you are right now isn’t good enough, but because the universe is a fascinating place, waiting for you to explore it. There are always more feathers to put in your cap; more people to change, more perspectives to learn. To stop that pursuit is to spell doom for your very being.