The Professor of Happiness

Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) was a lover of life. He loved pudding, wine, roast goose and shepherd’s pie. He was a writer, traveler, painter and gadfly among hotels, bars and restaurants. His career, he once wrote, “was mainly dedicated to the enjoyment of life.” He made the following absurd observations in his book To the One I Love the Best.

“I have never been able to convince myself that after I have passed through this magnificent world I’ll be admitted to a place even more astounding, to a paradise of better landscapes, restaurants, horses, dogs, cigars, and all the other objects of my adoration; for such would be my paradise…

For such as I, then, all is here and now, the rewards and the miracles. They are the green tree, the sunrise, and all the things we sing about – the jet plane, the paintbrush and the easel, the cadets of West Point, and especially children, most of all babies with their grave, observant eyes…

In spite of all that, that black moods descend on upon me, and consolation is hard to find….I lie on my own couch, suspended in cosmic gloom, the eye turned inward, and it takes awhile to console myself.

There are two cures. One is to work; all misery fades when I work, but I can’t work all of the time. The other is to celebrate. I, the confirmed lover of life and professor of happiness, look as we all must at life, and at the approaching day when we can only hope to be mourned for. I get hungry again and have to hurry to and reassure myself with another good bottle and a fine meal, and after the coffee I look through the blue smoke of my good cigar. I sit in the melancholy mood that is like cello music and search for the answers we shall never know…

People such as I live by rules of their own. We are not happy with the comforts that the group offers. We are off-horses, misfits… In the design that has been imposed upon humanity we are solitary, self-appointed outcasts. Outcast is too dramatic a word; let’s call us alonegoers. That also is not quite true, for I seek people and like them, but still in their midst I am alone…

My life has been colored mostly be a period spent in the army as a medic in the violent wards of an insane hospital… I learned there also to regard death as a generous manifestation, and to love life all the more for this discovery. And for the good of the soul I learned to step outside of myself, to forget the “I”, which is the key to happiness.”