Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem

“Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk.” Thus spoke Maurice Sendak, the great dreamer and creator of Where the Wild Things Are, whose heart, even in age, remembered the fierce and innocent joy of childhood. In these words, there is more than nostalgia — there is reverence. He does not merely recall a cartoon mouse; he recalls a symbol, an emblem of happiness, a moment when imagination burst forth like dawn after a long night. For Mickey Mouse, in the eyes of a child, was not ink and motion, but magic — a living spirit of laughter that awakened something eternal in the soul.

In the world of the ancients, joy was a sacred thing. The Greeks spoke of Euphrosyne, the goddess of gladness, and believed that joy was divine in origin — a light sent by the gods to remind mortals that life, though filled with toil and sorrow, was also meant for delight. Sendak’s memory is one such sacred spark. He speaks of the moment when the screen glowed and the heart of a child could no longer contain its wonder. It was a time when joy was pure and uncalculated, when happiness was not measured or compared, but simply felt. This is what he means when he calls Mickey “the emblem of happiness and funniness” — a symbol of the joy that needs no reason, that springs forth like a fountain from the innocence of the heart.

In those dark years of the early twentieth century, when war and hardship cast shadows over nations, the arrival of Mickey Mouse was no small thing. Walt Disney’s creation, born of laughter and simplicity, carried a light into theaters where weary souls gathered. For a few precious minutes, the audience — children and grown men alike — were lifted from the grayness of life into a world of joy. That is what the young Maurice Sendak felt — not just entertainment, but liberation. The sight of Mickey’s grin, his antics and his courage, was the promise that imagination could conquer gloom. In a world recovering from depression and conflict, such laughter was not foolishness — it was survival.

Sendak’s memory reminds us that the child within is not something to be outgrown, but something to be guarded like a flame. The ecstasy of imagination, that wild surge of joy when wonder seizes us, is what nourishes the artist, the dreamer, the thinker, and the lover of life. Many grow old not because their bodies age, but because they forget how to feel this way — how to go “berserk” with delight at something simple and sincere. Sendak, who would later fill his stories with creatures of both terror and tenderness, never forgot the power of childhood awe. It was Mickey — that small, smiling figure — who first taught him that art can awaken joy, that fantasy can redeem reality.

Let us look, too, to another who understood this — Charlie Chaplin, the silent clown whose humor healed hearts after war. When the world had little to laugh about, he made it laugh again. His “Tramp” was not merely a fool but a mirror of humanity’s resilience — turning tears into smiles, sorrow into song. Like Mickey Mouse, Chaplin’s art was not about perfection, but about hope and warmth. And it was in such laughter that the world remembered its own goodness. Both Chaplin and Mickey, in their way, showed that joy is not a shallow escape, but a form of courage — the courage to believe in light when the night seems endless.

Thus, Sendak’s recollection is not just about childhood. It is a teaching — that happiness and funniness are not trivial, but sacred forces that keep the human spirit alive. The artist who forgets to play loses his power to create; the adult who forgets to laugh forgets how to live. To embrace life, one must be willing to be moved — to let wonder seize the heart, to shout with joy, to laugh without reason. It is through this openness that we become more human, more compassionate, more alive.

So take this lesson to heart, O reader of later generations: protect your sense of wonder as a warrior guards his flame. Seek not happiness in possessions or achievements, but in those moments that awaken your soul — in music, in laughter, in the innocent faces of those who dream. Go to the “movies” of your own life — the little adventures, the quiet beauties — and when the great head of joy appears before you, do not resist it. Let yourself be overwhelmed. Let yourself, as Sendak did, go a little berserk with delight.

For that is the secret of enduring joy — not the comfort of constant pleasure, but the courage to feel deeply, to wonder wildly, and to love the simple miracles that make life luminous. Mickey Mouse may be drawn in ink, but what he awakened in Sendak — and in us — is eternal: the radiant, untamed child of the soul, who still believes that happiness is real and that laughter, freely given, can heal the world.