Thank you, Bob Ross

College has been hard, to say the least. I often thrusted myself into an academic whirlpool because I wanted to reach the little lure dangling tantalizingly over its heart. I sloshed forth through the frigid water, only to get sucked into that torrential whirlpool, having thought that I could reach that lure — reach it and have it save me. 

Before I exhaled my last breath, thrashed around by the current, I prayed for a savior — that someone, somewhere, would pull me out. And someone did. His name was Bob Ross.

And I know my plight may sound melodramatic in this context, to have a permed guy from Florida be the thing I could point to and say he saved me, but he did. In the midst of impersonal and judgemental academia, where professors felt less like friends and more like cold algorithms I had to please, Bob Ross actually spoke to me. In the softest of whispers, he looked me in the eye and said that he saw in me someone who was able to create. That to have the light pop through, you need darkness. And I believed him. Thankfully, I still believe him.

He told me that he struggled for years sweating and aching over some intangible idea of perfection. It felt all too familiar. He explained that painting should be for fun. That the canvas should be an outlet for emotion, not the demise of it. That accidents were happy, that you could create whatever you wanted.

It felt so odd that this man, by painting “happy clouds,” could stir such dormant emotions. That I could be awakened from an emotional and creative coma by listening to this unconventional sage talk over his brush rustling over a canvas. I was a serious adult, I had things to do and independence to exercise. I was meant to succeed, not mess around and waste my time feeling. It was not logical. But things don’t have to be — Bob taught me that.

We are creatures guided by emotion, and when that emotion is gone because something else is guiding us, some invented abstraction whose fulfillment we tell ourselves should satisfy our emotion, but whose pursuit only kills it, we have lost what it means to be human.

Because life is so much more than and so much simpler than the pursuit of some sort of vague notion of notoriety or achievement. Life doesn’t matter if you don’t feel good doing it; it is so vast and so complex that one goal cannot guide you. We are tethered to existence by emotion and it is emotion that constructs life’s great painting: that the spectrum of human emotion colors the canvas and creates experience; that a complete painting is made with all the colors; that it’s okay to make mistakes; that it’s okay to ease off when inspiration is dry; that it’s okay to let your feelings guide you; that it’s okay. That everything will be okay.

For much of the series, Bob Ross does not have a reference for what he is painting, other than what he feels like doing that day. Sometimes he wants to paint a forest, sometimes mountains (actually he is quite often in a mountain-painting mood), sometimes he wants to make something for someone else. But in all of his paintings, he chooses fulfillment. He always makes something that will make him happy. He gives his trees friends. He adds a little cabin where he would live. He makes the painting monochromatic to show a colorblind man that he can paint, too. He follows his heart, and encourages his viewers to do the same.

Bob Ross might not be thought of as among the artistic ranks of Velázquez, Monet or even Singer Sargent. But that doesn’t matter, because it does not have to matter. He simply did the thing that brought him joy — painting. And he shared that joy with the world. With every viewer. With me.

And I’m not going to peddle some kind of idealized scripture about the man, he had his troubles that he had to work through and fight to do what he loved. Hell, the pursuit of passion is hardly ever an easy one. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer for it, and it doesn’t mean you are not allowed to be happy in its pursuit, and it doesn’t mean you can’t take breaks and enjoy other things, too.

Bob Ross gave me the courage to know that, however valid my feelings were, I still had the power to create my own world.

As I swirled in my whirlpool, Bob Ross gave me a brush and told me to do as I pleased. The whirlpool was real, but my power to get out was even more so. So I painted myself a meadow and a mountain, with outcroppings full of wildflowers and kind people. Because although I still have a lot to climb, I can at least enjoy my time getting to the summit.