A commitment to laughter

One of the enriching blessings of growing older all the time is that it has a way of improving one's commitment to laughter — or at least it should. The person without a good sense of humour is a person to avoid as though he were a known carrier of the plague.

Horace Walpole once said, "I have never yet seen or heard anything serious that was not ridiculous." And Samuel Butler said, "The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken seriously." It has been said that seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. Oscar Wilde said, "It is a curious fact that the worst work is always done with the best intentions, and that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves very seriously."

We can be serious about situations. When a youngster is ill or hurt, or someone insults your spouse, you can get very serious about the situation in a hurry. But that's not taking ourselves seriously. That's different.

I have found it a good rule of thumb to be slightly suspicious of anyone who takes himself too seriously. There's usually something fishy there someplace. I think this is why we love children so much: Life is a game to them. They will do their best at whatever work is given them, but they never seem to lose their ebullient sense of humour; there is always a sparkle of humour in their eyes. When a child lacks this, he or she is usually in need of help.

Dictators are famous for their lack of humour. The mark of a cruel person is that he doesn't seem to be able to see anything funny in the world. And, a sense of humour was what was so great about Mark Twain. No matter how serious the subject, he could find the humour in it and bring it out. All the great comedians have this ability to see what's funny in the so-called serious situation. They can poke fun at themselves. There are those who believe that a sense of humour is the only thing that has kept the human race from totally extinguishing itself.

People who are emotionally healthy, with a sense of proportion, are cheerful people. They tend to look upon the bright side of things and see a lot of humour in their daily lives. They're not Pollyannas — they know what's going on and that a lot of it's not at all funny — but they don't permit the dark side of things to dominate their lives. To my mind, when a person lacks a sense of humour, there's something pretty seriously wrong with him.

There are times for all of us when all the laughter seems to be gone, but we should not permit these periods to last too long. When we've lost our sense of humour, there isn't very much left. We become ridiculous. We must then go to war against the whole world, and that's a war we cannot win.