It’s harder to be unhappy when you’re eating ice cream

I stole this phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, author of the most brilliant antiwar book I know – “Slaughterhouse Five”. Published in 1969, it remains fully current. I don’t know if it is included in the books recommended by the National Reading Plan, but it would be appropriate, for many reasons. If there wasn’t another one, because of the war that, in Ukraine, came back to haunt Europe.

A small publishing house has now published a compilation of speeches that Vonnegut gave to senior students at various North American universities between 1972 and 2004. There are more than 30 years of speeches and, as the author himself mentions, they are speeches and a few words about life. It addresses topics such as science and the importance of knowledge, the subordination of political power to the interests of the richest, the defense of the working classes and the most disadvantaged, the war that serves to convert millionaires into multimillionaires, the tragedy of hatred that consumes of many, in a permanent reckoning with the World: “revenge provokes revenge that provokes revenge – forming an uninterrupted chain of death and destruction, linking the nations of today to the barbarian tribes of thousands of years ago and thousands of years ago” .

Kurt Vonnegut was both an atheist and an admirer of the Sermon on the Mount. The reason was simple: replace the logic of revenge, as old as Hammurabi’s code, with the logic of mercy and forgiveness. “Being merciful is, it seems to me, the only good idea we’ve had so far.” And he appeals not to confuse the experience of living without hatred with a lack of convictions.

It addresses students without paternalism, reminding them how lucky they are to know and learn more, to have had teachers who made a difference in their lives. Thanks for the effort they have studied to qualify themselves and to qualify the country. And he asks them to please be happy, to be aware of the moments of happiness. As fleeting as these may be.

That’s why he insists that happiness lies in small things as insignificant as eating ice cream, but also in other small big things that result from the attention we pay to those around us, from the importance we give to the space we inhabit. Yes, happiness can be sought from afar, imagined and coveted without limits, but it is realized, on a daily basis, in the way we decide to relate with our neighbors, with those who live next to us, and in what we do to make life more acceptable.

*University professor