"Life is serious, art is cheerful," wrote Friedrich Schiller. But what is cheerfulness, really? And how can we bring it back into our serious lives? In times when, in the face of global crises, we instinctively feel differently, Axel Hacke sets out to rediscover a nearly forgotten state of mind, a perspective towards life that we have become strangely unpracticed in. Entertaining, insightful, and personal, he explores the origins of the term, explains what distinguishes cheerfulness from humor and joy, and why it cannot exist without the seriousness of life.

"To be a cheerful person does not mean to ignore the heavy, but to transform it into something light.".