Earlier this week, I found a “Where’s Waldo?” book hidden in my drawers.
For the first time in years, I scanned each page for the presence of the elusive Waldo.
The first few pages were easy –– I could instinctively find the target within a minute. Waldo was no match for my eagle eyes and powerful observational skills.
Empowered by my success, I flipped to the next page. Upon spending more than a minute searching for Waldo, though, I realized that the difficulty had increased. There were more people on these pages.
After three minutes, I finally found him. He might’ve eluded me at first, but I was still able to find him. The increased difficulty posed little challenge.
Flipping through the next few pages, I spent even less time finding Waldo. It was only when they added red herrings that I was once again thrown off. To my surprise, there were actually multiple people wearing red and white striped clothing!
But even this couldn’t hold me back for long. I pulled out my secret weapon — my reading glasses. After putting them on and squinting my eyes, I quickly found the real Waldo and stared into his cold dead eyes.
“You can try to hide, but I will find you soon enough,” I said to him. And then I flipped to the next page. In an instant, I knew that the difficulty had increased tenfold. Not only were there more people on the page, but all of them had also greatly shrunk in size.
Despite staring at the page for an hour, I still couldn’t find Waldo. For the first time in my short professional “Where’s Waldo?” career, I was faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
I shut my eyes and reminisced over the highs and lows of my career, and then, with poise and grace, I closed the book.
After years of searching for Waldo, I realized that, perhaps, the real Waldo was the friends we made along the way.
