Cheerfulness Breaks In – Sunday, February 16, 1997
In his famous biography of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell quotes from a conversation between Johnson and a man named Oliver Edwards. Edwards makes the following observation: “I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.”1
There are those individuals who seem to have a special gift for this kind of cheerfulness. They’re the ones who no matter how grim circumstances may be retain a certain lightness of spirit. they are the ones who can see the comic potential of a given situation. They are the ones who laugh and invite the rest of us to laugh with them. They are the ones who as proverb notes enjoy “a continual feast”2 because of their merry hearts.
Spending time with people who possess the gift of good cheer can restore our souls. In their presence we begin to see the world the way they see it, so that the event we might ordinarily find tedious or irritating, stressful or sad, becomes somehow amusing, perhaps even the basis for an anecdote to be shared with friends later on. E.B. White author of the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web notes that “there is a deep vein of melancholy running through everyone’s life and that the humorist, perhaps more sensible of it than others, compensate for it actively and positively.”3
When we are with this type of individual we laugh too. We enjoy ourselves and ultimately, we feel better about our own lives.
People of good cheer come in all shapes and sizes. One may be the 9-year-old niece who’s excited to teach you a new magic trick. Another may be a co-worker who collects and shares silly jokes. Another may be the next-door neighbor who can survey all the messes of a hard day and find something to laugh about. There still may be a wonderful comic character in a book. Like good and faithful friends these beloved personalities are there for us, ready and willing to make us smile.
No matter who they are, the people who lift our spirits deserve our affection and our deepest thanks. We should cherish them always for in a very real sense they help us follow that divine admonition from long ago to “be of good cheer.”4
1 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Jonson (London: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 251.
2 Old Testament, Proverbs 15:15.
3 E.B. White, Essays E. B. White (New York: Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1979), p. 243.
4 New Testament, Matthew 14:27.
February 16, 1997
Broadcast Number 3,522