Time for a Good Laugh?

I wanted to write about laughter, and particularly those times when we laugh ‘until we cry’, when we forget why we are laughing but can’t stop, when our laughter infects others, when our eyes water and our stomachs ache. I was going to suggest that although some great comedians can induce such laughter (Ken Dodd? Billy Connolly? Peter Kay?) we usually experience it with trusted groups of friends. Such shared laughter is an escape from reality, is lived ‘in the moment’ and seems to bond us in a special way.

I wanted to contrast this healthy laughter with the everyday smile, chortle, raised eyebrow acknowledgement and chuckle demanded in everyday exchanges … to wit, jokes, ‘friendly’ insult, banter, shared video clips, irony and sarcasm. Here we are not helpless with mirth, bonded with others but rather making choices about how to respond to a social game. Can we all agree that this is funny? Are you the only one who thinks this isn’t funny? Would it be easiest just to smile and move on?

I wanted to praise and encourage uncontrollable laughter as precious experience of shared existential insight, glimpses into the tragedy and joy of human existence.

I wanted to … but I couldn’t.

If much of life involves walking a narrow pathway between hope and despair, then increasingly I find myself gazing into the chasm of the latter. Religious and racial hate, war, binary politics, greed, increasing inequality, climate catastrophe, profit and growth before everything, innocent victims – and then there’s the inexorable privatisation of the Health Service, our underfunded schools, our effluent filled rivers, the housing crisis …. these aren’t laughing matters.

Things need to change – and then maybe we can all have a good laugh.

Jamie Thompson