LAUGHTER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 9 August 1924, Page 13

LAUGHTER.

SAYING GRACE OF HUMOUR

THE COMIC SIDE OF OURSELVES,

Laughter is the outward and audible sign, of the inward and saving grace °f humour. It is the safety valve of civilisation. As long as you can laugh, you will never see the inside of a mental hospital other than as a visitor. Lunatics are notoriously serious persons who are quite incapable of humour. Were they otherwise they would turn round and laugh at themselves, oidy then they wouldn’t be lunatics It is a fine thing to be able to laugh when the joke is against yourself, says a writer in the Melbourne Age. That is the true test of the possession of the saving grace. Most of us are able at some time or another to see the funny side of ourselves, and to laugh with others who see the same thing. Take th© commonest form of laughter raiser. You are, for the sake of argument, disporting yourself on a pair of roller skates. Suddenly and without warning your feet slide from beneath you and you take up your position on the floor in a most undignified manner. Your friends will immediately laugh at you. If you are at all hurt you may not see the joke then, but you will later, and possibly nobody will tell the story with more relish than vourself.

In. this business of laughing at your, self you do not necessarily see the joke at once. It may take vou weeks or months or even years. It all depends upon the amount of hurt you have received. Laughter is usually directed at th© other fellow’s discomfiture, and when you have experienced pain of any kind you do not always get over it at once. Youg people in love are usually objects of laughter, and it may be that in after years or even weeks they will be able to laugh at themselves; but while the grand passion is in progress they ar© utterly devoid of any recognition of the fact that they are furnishing food for laughter or that they will one day laugh at themselves. " Life after all is mainly a serious business when one is living it intensely. It is between intensities that laughter comes. Chauncev Depew, the famous American, advises all people to laugh at themselves, and points to the fact that his attainment of 90 years of age is due to being able to see the comic side of himself. That aspect of the inatter alone is worth considering. Everybody is anxious to live as long as possible, and if laughing at oneself adds a few years to existence, let us all realise how absurd we are. Chauncey says that while laughing you can’t think, and that rests your brain; hut it does more than that. It prevents the morbid thought from gaining the ascendancy, and it is too often the morbid thought which sets us on the path which leads to early oblivion. The saying “laugh and grow fat” simply means that your physical condition is in proportion to your ability to shut out the uncheerful thought'; but it is an open question whether you are fat first and then jolly as a result, or jolly and then fat. The former is probably the correct solution to the riddle, because fat people have good digestions. We never heard of a man who cured his emaciation through compelling himself to laugh. At the same time there are thin men who have very healthy laughs and use them constantly, yet they never grow fat. Of °ne thing we can be sure — laughter is a good tonic. It is better than pills or medicine; and the laugh-' ter which has its origin in our own misfortune is the best tonic of all. That was what Robert Burns was driving at w’hen he said—

Oh, wad some power the gif tie gie us To see ourself.as ithers see us, It wad frae mony a blunder free us And foolish notion. 3 But Burns gives the impression that humanity is woefully lacking in the quality of personal insight, whereas that is hardly the case, in these days anyway. Most of us are able at times to jump out of our own skins and take a dispassionate look at ourselves, and it is this quality which enables us to see our own troubles in the light of humour. And there is no' doubt that the tragedy of to-day is the comedy of tomorrow, and that, failing death, there is some humour to be extracted from all human ills. As one gets on in hte it is well to look back over the held of personal tragedies and assess k .® ir P r ®sent value. The normal man will find that behind him there is a long list of funny incidents, which although serious enough at the time have ceased to be so, and are now really funny. The reason, of course is that we are not now what we were tnen. We are really regarding the experiences of another person altogether, someone with whom we were m complete sympathy at the time, hut whose troubles failed to awaken a responsive chord in us in view of our increased experience and widened outJook The child who i s denied its heart s desire in the shane of a tart weeps pathetically. When it comes to manhood it looks hack and .laughs, tarts have become commonplace. One can have a hundred if one likes, and one is completely indifferent. The youth who loved a maiden who turned him down for someone else looks hack iiom his position as a married man' with a family and laughs softlv at what was then his agony. The aspiring political candidate who was turned down flat by the electors and lost his deposit regards in later years his disappointment with mirth and tells the joke against himself.

So humanity goes on from year to year creating laughter out of what was once bitter tragedy, and when you hear of a man or woman who has reached extreme old age it will not be out of place to say of them that they must have been good laughers. Certain it is that they could not have been good pessimists. .