I was looking back at some of my old writing recently and I found my college application essay for UChicago (newflash: waitlisted), with the prompt of “So where is Waldo, really?” Rereading, I am surprised at how applicable this essay is to what I’m going through right now, along with a lot of other college students I know. In such a fast-paced world, it doesn’t take too much to lose perspective and I’m more than happy to be reminded of the things that matter by a younger self.

When I was ten, my parents and I were perusing through a garage sale when I spotted a Where’s Waldo? Puzzle. This wasn’t any puzzle for babies; this was an authentic Where’s Waldo? 500 piece puzzle, and one of those 500 pieces had a little man with either a bad fashion taste or a very limited wardrobe. I decided right then and there it was the most precious item in any garage sale in a fifty mile radius. After ten minutes of coaxing my parents to get it for me, they relented. That night, my family and I sat around the puzzle, piecing it together with mugs of hot chocolate and the glow of the TV playing The Sixth Element. My sister retired after the edges were complete, preferring to watch Bruce Willis beating up aliens and my parents stuck it out with me until they let me put in the last puzzle piece. It was there, on the floor of my living room, where I spent two hours on my own looking for Waldo. My ten-year-old patience was waning when I finally spotted him – or the part of him that wasn’t concealed behind a wall.

My first reaction was overwhelming relief – I wasn’t going to have to ask my parents to call the manufacturers to tell them they made a mistake. My second reaction was confusion. Why had I spent so long looking for him? He wasn’t behind that wall indefinitely. In another poster, he was under a table. In another book, he was peeking out from behind the Eiffel Tower. Once I found him, he’d be somewhere else with the turn of a page. Looking for him for the sake of knowing where he is is like determining the location of an electron: we can’t, unless we knock it somewhere else. Even if I find Waldo a thousand times over, I’ll never know where he is. He is a McGuffin, a device in the form of some coveted object that the protagonist is willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to pursue, often with little or no narrative explanation as to why it is considered so important. If so, why do we need to find out where Waldo was anyway?

You see, we think that finding him on a page means knowing where he is, just as we believe that perfect GPA or a dream school or a spouse or a high paycheck equates happiness. Happiness has always been a conditional thing, with more than a few strings attached, with “ifs” and “thens” galore. Why can’t we look for and find Waldo while being content with never knowing where he actually is? Why can’t we just be happy while we chase our utmost aspirations? And for goodness’ sake, look at Waldo! Never has he looked scared or worried upon being found; he always has that devilish smile and unblinking eyes behind those oversized glasses. He’s happy where he is, probably with Carmen Sandiego. They might even have Waldieguettes by now. He’s living his life, while we look for him, naively believing that we will one day be able to answer “Where is Waldo, really?” just as we naively believe that milestones like a diploma, an admittance letter, a spouse, and society’s other definitions of happiness will actually make us happy.

Waldo’s passion for travel should inspire us in the journey towards our goals, and we should toast to his unending travels as we toast to the infiniteness of our dreams and our desire to live them. But to think that finding him on a page means that we know where Waldo is is like saying that happiness is defined by those societal milestones, and never has a falser statement been declared. Perhaps we should have a little more faith in Waldo. Perhaps we should look for him in trust that he is happy wherever he is, because it doesn’t matter where he is – so long as we keep looking. And perhaps we should be happy wherever we are, even as we chase our dreams and aspirations.
So, you ask: where is Waldo, really? To which I answer: frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I’m okay with looking for him nevertheless.