LAUGHTER—AND THE INCURABLE “MOANER”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 887, 3 February 1930, Page 5

LAUGHTER—AND THE INCURABLE “MOANER”

|; It is only after one has passed i through the secret portals of one of |! life's “hells” that people really know • | when to laugh! The incurable !; “moaner” has always had a comparai | tively easy time of it. | j The tragic figures of existence are j always outwardly cheerful, j; Poor things, they have to be. j j Just as Nature in some mysterious J way seems to give to those suffering !; physically an additional fortitude of * i the spirit, so in the same mysterious

way the soul gathers unto itself a j well-nigh divine strength in, and after, the hours of its greatest tribulations. It is a case of the mind’s self-preser- i vation. To give way would be to go under and to die. All the same, it is unfortunate that those who moan and wail the loudest always get the most immediate sympathy. Usually they need it so infinitely less than the poor brave things who are passing, or who have passed, through the deeper tragedies of life, and must from sheer terror, perhaps, go forth with inner courage showing itself in outward laughter. One is never very moved by the emlaneholy figure who goes through the world carrying his sorrow on his sleeve. Inwardly he is as proud of it as is the woman who, having gained the reputation of being witty, must always strain to be so—at anybody’s expense if need be. After all, one can only afford to smile, after a certain age, when one has been through the deeper sorrows of life. Only then do the miseries which the more fortunate make such a fuss about appear in their right perspective. And so the more cheery the middle-aged man or woman may be. the more one suspects a life of sorrow and of pain behind their smiles. Only after one has touched, though in secret, the depths which each human heart is capable of reaching, can one come up to the surface with a smile. It is when people “make a song” about their unhappiness that we know they have not been so very unlucky after all. People rarely “make a song” of anything which is real and true. They are the “pretenders” who always struggle to get into the limelight. The genuine don’t trouble to do so, nor do they care. We judge other people very superficially—perhaps because most of us live entirely on the surface. The depths always take us by surprise. We fear them, so we resent them. —R.K.