Laughter – Sunday, April 26, 1998
Very few attributes in life are as important as a sense of humor. A chuckle of amusement can become the healthiest and sanest response we can make to life’s calamities. Laughter can defuse a tense confrontation, produce a sense of humility and perspective, turn enemies into friends, build courage in the face of life’s sternest trials. We recall former American President Ronald Reagan cracking jokes with the surgeons who were about to remove an assassin’s bullet, or we recall the gallant courage of Shakespeare’s Mercutio, who responds to a death wound with puns and wit. Laughter in the face of great tribulation is perhaps the best indication we have of character.
At its best, comedy can heal. The soured heart, the darkened soul, the mind given over to depression and loneliness can reawaken with the comfort of healthy laughter. Charles Dickens’ character Scrooge was one healed with laughter. After a night filled with remorse and repentance, Scrooge reforms and finds his side splitting with laughter at his own follies. Though others laughed at his transformation, Scrooge paid them little heed, for, as Dickens put it, “His own heart laughed, and that was good enough for him.”1 Or, as Robert W. Corrigan wrote, “Comedy celebrates man’s capacity to endure.”2 We laugh, and even our gloomiest circumstances seem bearable somehow.
Laughter can heal, but laughter can also wound. The medicine of comedy works best when we aim it at ourselves—our own faults and frailties—and not as a weapon at the perceived faults of others. But we’ll find that our own embarrassing situations, foolish statements, and prideful pomposities can disappear with a good chuckle, inviting our friends and loved ones to laugh with us and thereby bringing us all closer together. As we find ways to laugh together, we’ll find that healthy laughter enriches us all.
1Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1962), p. 120.
2Robert W. Corrigan, Comedy, Meaning and Form (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1965), p. 353.
ERIC SAMUELSEN
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April 26, 1998
Broadcast Number 3,584