As a kid, I was fortunate to realize the value in sadness, and Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, born 100 years ago Nov. 26, was a big reason why.
I’d finish my writing assignments early in third grade precisely so that the teacher would send me to a back nook of the room where I hunkered down with Peanuts strips. You had the sense they were telling you the truth. Parts of life were inevitably hard, but those were the parts that made the better portions possible.
There’s a somber shading to Peanuts, for all of the wit. Yes, Snoopy is the weirdest pet in the history of kept animals, as much an individualist — never mind that he’s a beagle — as any human cutaway one might encounter.
But consider how well-versed Charlie Brown is in the realities of unrequited love and just-out-of-reach goals. The kicking of a football, for instance, ripped away by his best friend’s sister.
The strip and the animated features extol a form of wisdom we encounter in both the blues and the writings of Henry David Thoreau. All is not lost, despite how things most seem, because of what Peanuts is most about: faith.
Peanuts’ faith is not a faith in God. It’s a faith in the individual. Linus Van Pelt — Charlie Brown’s best friend — is often the mouthpiece for the knowledge upon which this faith is based. Linus lives for tomorrow by trying to understand what happened today and how he might grow — and deepen — as a result.
For a kid whose imagination manifests in the love of a pumpkin patch of the utmost sincerity, Linus is grounded as a thinker. He’s willing to take things as they come. When the bad news stacks, as if built up by a thousand blocks of torment, he’s content with waiting until the last block is in place. Then we can go from there.
We are all familiar with the stock adage that if you don’t get what you like, you better like what you get. I find that so defeatist, and very anti-Peanuts, as Schulz intended his creation. You are often going to get what you don’t like. It’s fine to spend time with it — but no longer than you must — and make something better from that life experience, which itself can have surprising rewards.
The idea of “living well” implies a rich contentment. But maybe we live best when we move through the negativity — while allowing that it is what it is — so as to live better in what comes after it. Schulz’s Peanuts is a potent reminder that this passage itself can still hold moments of laughter and appreciation.
In Peanuts, the characters savor what is around them, even when they struggle. Charlie Brown’s baseball team keeps taking the field, despite the losses, glad to do so even while knowing sadness.
The latter is so prevalent that it’s part of Charlie Brown’s favorite saying. “Good grief,” he’ll intone, and I think he’s on to something insightful with that adjective.
Grief can, indeed, be good. You don’t have to like it. You’re not a masochist. But you can be a profiteer of life, an opportunist who understands that opportunity often isn’t what we think it is.
For instance: Letting go can be a great way, paradoxically, to hold on. I’ll have times when things are so bad I don’t think I can continue, let alone get anywhere. But I pull a Peanuts, if you will. I give up. I let the blocks stack. I let go. I can do this, because I have faith. A moment will come when a generator kicks in — as it would for Charlie Brown — and the power that has gone out, flickers back to life.
Then I start to come back without trying to. I feel stronger. Ready to go. If I were Charlie Brown, it would be now that I phoned Peppermint Patty and told her to get the gang to the baseball field, so we could practice for a game we may never win. I’d ask out the little red-haired girl, and if she broke my heart, I’d also have faith that my heart could take it, and could be proud of myself — happy with myself — for having tried.
There’s positivity in the ultramarine hues of the Peanuts world, which overlaps so readily with ours. They’re going to happen anyway, those blues. But there is a joy to be harvested from them. It’s an autumnal joy — not a joy of red hot summer — but the kind that lasts and teaches. If there’s a better form of joy, I’m unaware of it.
Pull a Peanuts when need be. It’s a great gift, worthy of being bestowed by Linus’ Great Pumpkin himself. And one that Charles Schulz has already given us.
Fleming is a writer.
