222. Life Jacket
I don’t have much to say about this one except that it’s a gift to my wife. We’ve been a couple for over 10 years now, and just like any relationship, we have our ups and downs. We’re definitely not the carefree young lovers we used to be. Life, work, money and children have been stressing us out lately, but amidst it all, we can always count on each other.
The previous episodes in The Lovers series:
CS Lewis – To Love at All
A Love Story in Four Parts
Albert Camus – The Middle of Winter
If You Love Someone, Set Them Free
This series didn’t start out as autobiographical, but they most certainly turned out they way. Unlike my wife and I, the comic couple don’t have kids … yet.
Discussion (71) ¬
are there any chances of getting this one as a poster? I’d love to have it on my wall.
Yes, i’ll be making it into a poster very soon! glad you like it
Poster now available 🙂 https://shopzenpencils.com/products/lifejacket
This is beautiful. Thank you.
I had started to wonder why has he not published yet 🙂 you are my home page, so I eagerly await your stories.and so glad that mundaness of life received space here <3
Yes i know it’s been awhile, i’ve been working on a few other things lately, thanks for your patience!
YAY! Love WINS!
People really need to see this. We need to stop and be grateful that love can turn out peaceful like this instead of seeing it as boring.
My wife and I have been married for 34 years and this is how I feel about our love. It is different than when we married, deeper and better. Thank you Zen Pencils for expressing this so well.
Just what I needed. Thank you.
This reminds me so much of our lives! I even own a yellow car 🙂 Would love to have this as a poster to hang in our house. Thank you for reminding us how beautiful and vibrant our lives are still!
I love this!!! I hope you decide to make it into a poster!
Love it, love it, love it.
Add me to the “hope it becomes a poster” queue.
And congratulations on 10 years, you two!
Beautiful, Gavin. We need now more than ever to celebrate love when and wherever it happens. Thank you.
Awww… I didn’t realize it was patched up balloon couple until the last frame! What a heart-warming and reaffirming reveal. Beautiful!
aweseome I am glad that wife is off to her porno shoot while the man raises the kids. All is right with the world
Love your thoughts, ‘anonymous’. Continue being the a-hole that you are, and keep crapping all over such brilliant messages of love.
Hot Damn! I see you Sir and/or Madam don’t believe in female entrepreneurship or unconventional gender-roles.
You are a spitting image of a Red Dupe if I’ve ever seen one.
Shame on you.
Beautiful! Unlike glamorization of love, this is realilty.
I’m also just coming up to 10 years with my girl and this rings so true. Thanks for drawing it!
Any chance we might get the whole lover’s series as a poster set? I know some of them are available, but not others (rights issue?)
Would be nice to be able to have the whole series!
Thanks for always putting out quality work with important messages!
Nice, cryptic that you have to end with “the comic couple don’t have kids … yet.” … yet?
It’s so real!!!! Love it!! Even the doggie! Whahahaha
very real content i have found very interesting stuff here.
Delightful, although I don’t think the HOA would approve that floaty-design. I would suggest heavy duty rivets or for DIY people nothing beats anchoring the house with 50 meter auger.
We have been married 53 years and this is truly us.
Oh dear! That last panel was like meeting an old friend after many many years! The balloons! You made me smile, Grav!
Best one yet! The toilet scene is so real, very bold.
I gotta say, I think it’s adorable that you showed the plumbing going to the ground in the last frame! The home floats, but the plumbing’s legit haha!
That last panel is brilliant ! I was thinking that it’s an odd choice to draw the wife stepping out on a ladder in the “Going to work” panel and didn’t even realize it when I scrolled to the balloons and then a little more and it all made sense !! Brilliant story telling!
LOVE this! Today is our 11 year anniversary of being together (when my husband asked me to be his girlfriend) and we just celebrated our 8 year wedding anniversary. We currently have 2 dogs, 1 cat, and no children. This comic completely struck a chord with me. I’d love this as a poster!
what does the 222 symbolize for for you?
Ah, love conquers all! Thank you ?
Wow, very cool … well done Gavin, expertly and lovingly captured!
This is deep! Love from Kashmir!
I, as a plumber, thank you for the detail of the piping. ?
Well there was a couple of toilet scenes so I figured there had to be plumbing 🙂
Thank you for this. Truth about love and marriage.
This is an absolute truth.
This is so lovely.
Love this. Love love…. and LOVE ZENPENCILS!!!
Gav, this is really great. So true of many relationships. This describes my partner and i perfectly after these years. Spot on, as you always are. Great job
Awww. One day.
After 19+ years together and surviving his liver transplant last May, we can relate to this one on soooooo many levels. We may not be rich but together we are wealthy beyond measure. Thank you for depicting that so well… we even have a 13yo schnauzer! Blessings to you and your wife. 🙂
This made me smile. Thank you for that! 🙂
Awwwww… I’m emailing it to my wife of 20-mumble years. Hugs to you and yours, Gav!
I don’t know if I can truly believe in love as something that actually exists anymore.
Whether it’s science or philosophy, the notion of love seems to be rather unreal and there is recent evidence to support it.
If you go into philosophy you can point to some existential philosophers that say love is just an animal instinct to facilitate breeding and that we give too much power to it. If you go into eastern philosophy you hear that love is an illusion, or that it isn’t real. That what you love is really just a concept that you have assigned to them like kindness, strength, brains. But people aren’t that if they were they would exhibit such traits all the time. Even if they did you would be in love with the concept not the person.
Eastern philosophy seems to converge with modern neuroscience on love and the self. Science has long known love to be just an illusion, a trick of the mind. In regards to the self science is beginning to support that there isn’t one, that what we think is a self or some one is just a collection of brain activity and cultural messages, kind of blowing a hole in the whole “loving someone” aspects.
It seems to be that the more one reads and learns the more they see love as something that is either not real or terribly overrated. It reminds me of how fools fall in love, maybe you have to be a fool or willfully ignorant to believe in it.
Is it really a trick of the mind, or is it what the mind has consequently concluded from experiences and connections with a person? Ask 10 people to define ‘What is love?’ and the answers vary. We know there are many kinds of love, at different levels. Rather than ‘falling in love’, the love presented in this comic is a result of a continuously growing amount of memories, interactions, knowledge about each other and the love that they feel about the other and feel in return is coming from a lot (LOT) of things.
I’m thinking although you can simplify a person scientifically as cells, or thoughts as neurons passing signals, and love as hormones and chemicals, the meaning and experience of love is what is real to the person. As in, loving someone until you don’t doesn’t mean you didn’t love them when you did. And believing in love is not ‘unpractical’ – it often solves some of our more complex problems.
Except you are just buying into an illusion.
You don’t love a person, you love the traits that they have. Attraction is based on some physical characteristics. What you imagine to be A LOT of things is really just a rationalization of the illusion.
The experience of love is also not real, it’s just a chemical trick of the mind. When it comes to a moment of lucidity without it’s influence that’s when people break apart. Each human is born alone and dies alone.
Believing in love also doesn’t solve problems, it just creates the illusion that it does.
Saying that love is just a chemical trick is like saying one can hold ones hand indefinitely on a hot stove because pain is merely an illusion caused by chemicals and removing ones hand won’t solve the problem.
There’s not really that much depth in being in love: It’s like being friends with someone except you wanna bone ’em.
You cannot equate love to pain. Pain doesn’t make things into something they aren’t, it’s a response to avoid harm to the body.
Love is an illusion that makes another person appear different than how they are
I see your knowledge of pain is about as wast as you knowledge of love.
I once had a head-splitting headache. My friend came up to me and started making some small talk. Nothing out of the ordinary but because of the pain I though he was the biggest douche-bottle I’ve ever met because he dared to make sounds with his face-hole while I was in agony.
Therefore: Pain can very easily make things/people seem different yet this doesn’t make it any less real “chemical trick”.
Also marginalizing something just because it is caused by chemicals would marginalize everything that any living thing has ever done and that is a very dic… not-nice thing to do.
This is really sweet Aww i loved it so much .The way you have defined emotions on your picture is fabulous.
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Very effective blogpost, good pictures collections.
What a lovely gift… hope the best for the both of you in your relationship and in your career as an author and cartoonist.
Wow, very cool. Expertly and Lovingly captured!
I’ve been a follower of this comic since 2012 and have always looked forward to your comics. I was single then and now, I’m married for almost 3 years. This is how me and my husband feel for each other. We’re over the honeymoon period but we have developed a love for each other that’s deeper and better. Thank you Gav for expressing this so perfectly!
Aww lovely to hear Gale!
What a nice article.
Good Article.
Aww. That’s great stuff mate! I love the way you portray the things using the images.
Thanks for the article!
Team GoSchools
true love never ends but it grow stronger stronger every day. I know sometime we get busy on earning money, but it dosen’t mean we don’t care about each other.
It was best comic illustration I have ever seen today.
I love this one. I love how you show her climbing down the ladder when she goes off to work, and only the last picture reveals the (your? :-)) floating house. Thank you, Gav!
Il Vero Amore non finisce mai
Thanks for sharing.I hope you continue to have such quality articles to share with everyone! I believe there will be many people who share my views when they read this article from you.Those who come to read your article will find lots of helpful and informative tips
This really describe what real life looks like. Thank you
Excellent article. I was wondering about this so I’m very happy I found your website.
Very Nice, Good thoughts.