Imagine a mundane, post-war America obsessed with conformity. In this world of mean definitions of perfection, everyone secretly felt their own families were peculiar, if not downright eerie.

Enter Charles Addams, a middle class guy, toiling away in a nameless drab office from an unremarkable little town in New Jersey. Little did he know, within the confines of his mind, he was dreaming up a masterpiece of madness, campiness and dark humor.

As a kid, watching Addams' masterpiece on my family's only TV, a bulbish, black-and-white thing sitting in a giant wooden cabinet, I loved the Addams Family. As an adult, watching it on my iPad, I still love it. Perhaps even more. Why is it still so popular? Turns out we all have a little bit of the Addams family in us.

The Addams Family stands as a work of unparalleled creativity, universally adored, and enduring across generations. One might think that Charles Addams devoted his entire life to this iconic creation, but that assumption would be far from the truth. While Addams was indeed a prolific cartoonist, crafting around 1,300 New Yorker cartoons over a three decade span, it’s worth noting that only 58 of those were Addams family cartoons.

From our linear perspective, the one that often dominates our daily lives, we tend to believe that each of our actions carry equal weight. We place great emphasis on building upon our past, and anxiously fretting the future. This worldview centers on the concept of accumulation, where every action, every moment, and every person is just as important as the next. We adhere to the notion that our past predicts our future, and our present is essentially a mirror reflecting the culmination of our past choices, actions, and efforts.

It may seem like everything follows a predictable pattern-- just look at the track record. (As if most of us had ever been to the racetrack, let alone had a record of it.)

Yet, the Addams Family’s rise to fame was anything but predictable. Those original 58 cartoons served as just a handful of seeds thrown onto the hardscrabble Manhattan ground in the 1940's, amidst a thousand other seeds, sown by Addams and countless other creatives all striving for fame and recognition in their own unique ways.

However, these particular Addams seeds not only took root, but flourished into towering trees, eventually forming a dense forest of creativity.

As a result, the Addams Family has been a mainstay in popular culture for the better part of the last century. When Addams first published his cartoons in the New Yorker Magazine, he probably only expected a short-term phenomenon, unaware of the enduring impact of his own genius, and how profoundly it would resonate with the public. The chord he struck is still ringing today.

I can imagine him sitting on one of those extremely uncomfortable wooden chairs they had in every office in post WWII Manhattan, just churning out that weird Addams Family stuff all day, returning home after the long, hard days of work to his wife, Barbara Jean, whose likeness inspired the icon "Morticia", or, Mrs. Addams, which in real life, she actually was.

Meanwhile, to make ends meet, he took on various side gigs, one of which involved painting a mural in the library of Penn State University.

This was genuinely groundbreaking, a far cry from the works of Diego Rivera, who was simultaneously creating large murals at 30 Rock, a stone’s throw away from the Addams’ humble abode in Manhattan, during that era.

Kudos to the art procurement folks at Penn. State, though I hope no one faced the consequences for their daring choice. The mural was, and remains… a distinctive masterpiece. There it still hangs, evolved from its original resemblance of an Addams retread of his New Yorker cartoons, to one of the most renowned college murals in the country. Was any of this planned? Well thought out? Was it intentionally crafted to build a linear ladder to Addams’ future, or was it a shrewd career move for the person at Penn State who commissioned Addams to paint this mural in their library?

Not likely. It was akin to the potrayal of Gomez in the mural, skillfully angling with his fishing rod. He seems amused by something substantial on the line.... and its big, but he doesn’t know what it might be, and seems perfectly unbothered. Notice the expression on his face– it’s bliss.

Like Gomez, Addams did have something big on the line. Way bigger than anyone could have imagined. Starting in the sixties, 60 TV episodes were made, strange black-and-white extravaganzas, most of which are still in syndication. Six movies have also been released. One of them was a big hit with Angelica Huston playing a ravishing Morticia. Just last year, Netflix released “Wednesday”, a TV-spinoff featuring the eldest daughter of the clan in all her deadpan, death-obsessed glory.

Heck, there was even a Broadway musical. The true testament to the phenomenon lies in the fact that the Addams family musical stands as the most performed high school stage production, not only in the US, but world-wide (Playbill, Aug 2019).

The eerie twist in this tale is that Charles Addams was a man of many talents, excelling in various endeavors that matched the brilliance of the Addams Family. He ventured into multiple other cartoon series, had a colorful romantic life (marrying several gorgeous women after he and his first wife split), published a book of nursery rhymes, and counted luminaries like Alfred Hitchcock and Ray Bradbury as friends.

In short, Addams had a successful, fulfilling life, accomplished much, endearing himself to many. Yet, his enduring legacy is a little snippet of work he did in the 40's, a piece he might have casually dismissed, if not for our relentless fascination with it for the last 75 years.

What makes this all the more uncanny is the stark contrast to the narrative we tell ourselves about our work, the importance of each and every thing we dream, accomplish, and pass on. Sometimes, only a small fraction of our efforts turns out to be significant, if we are so fortunate. It’s a paradox, for every fragment of what we do, who we are, and what we imagine, contains our essence. Yet, most of our daily toil bears little lasting consequence.

If that’s the reality we face, what’s the point in trudging away at whatever it is we are working on right now if most of what we do will never amount to anything? It's because the trick, the slight-of-hand of the universe, is that one is never quite sure which of our useless endeavors will turn into the next “Addams Family”.

Each of our actions, thoughts, fears, and hopes, are seeds. Most will not grow into trees, but a few will. We may never know which, so all should be greeted as if they will. So, as frustrating yet wonderful as it might be, we must treat everything as if its our own NEXT MASTERPIECE!

Lucky for us, we live in a universe where the "whole" is often more than the sum of its parts. A universe that is not nearly as linear and cumulative as our little brains believe. A world in which some random cartoonist scribbles a picture of Uncle Fester on a sheet of paper, and becomes one of the most celebrated creatives of the last century.

We never know when a new "whole" will burst out from the confines of its parts, like the splitting of an atom, or the bifurcation of a cell, from one into one million. This uncertainty is a source of hope, and it's imbued with a delightful touch of the creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky, just like— the Addams Family.

The Whole is More Than the Sum of its Parts