Who is your favorite cartoon character?
Lisa Simpson was the first character I thought of, which probably says something in itself.
I relate to Lisa because she is bright, curious, idealistic and often slightly out of step with the people around her. She reads, questions, argues, worries about the state of the world and gets frustrated when everyone else seems perfectly happy not to think too hard about things.
That feels familiar.
I also recognise something of my own family position in her. Lisa has an older brother and a younger sister. So did I. I grew up between an older brother and a younger sister, which gives you a particular place in the family: never the eldest, never the baby, always somewhere in between, observing both directions.
Then there is the music. Lisa has her saxophone; I had my flute. I played it at school and understood the pleasure of having an instrument that was entirely your own — something slightly separate from schoolwork, family and all the other expectations around you. Music offered another way of expressing yourself.
Her environmentalism is an even stronger connection. I am a geographer and an environmentalist, a lover of woods, rivers and landscapes, and over the years I have also been a campaigner for the places and habitats I care about. I have never regarded the natural world as scenery in the background. I want to understand how places work, how they change, what is being lost and what can still be protected or restored.
That instinct began young. I wandered, explored, collected, observed and wrote things down. I followed streams, climbed hills, examined woods and tried to understand why one place looked and felt different from another. I am still doing essentially the same thing now: walking through ancient woodland, identifying trees, noticing what is regenerating and what is missing, looking at old boundaries and watercourses, and asking what can be done to look after them better.
Lisa has that same inability simply to shrug when something matters. She cares about animals, pollution, trees, climate and injustice, and she is prepared to make herself unpopular by saying so. I recognise that too. Campaigning often means being the person who keeps asking the awkward question after everyone else would quite like to move on.
There is also the books-and-ideas side of her. Lisa is not interested in knowledge merely to pass an exam. She wants to know things because knowing is exciting. That combination of intellectual curiosity and creativity feels very close to me: reading, writing, photography, music, history, geography, teaching, storytelling — one interest constantly spilling into another.
And Lisa is an observer. She belongs to the family and to Springfield, but she is often standing half a step outside both, watching what everyone else is doing and wondering why.
I know that feeling very well.
Perhaps what I like most is that she has not become cynical. She can be sarcastic, certainly, and she knows perfectly well that the world is ridiculous, but she still believes it can be better.
That mixture of curiosity, scepticism, creativity, environmental concern and stubborn idealism is probably why I immediately thought of her.
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