An Ounce of Laughter
Transcendence restores humor. Spirit restores humor. Suddenly, smiling returns. Too many representatives of too many movements – even many very good movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, meditation, spiritual studies – seem to lack humor altogether. In other words, they lack lightness, they lack a distance from themselves, a distance from the ego and its grim game of forcing others to conform to its contours. There is self-transcending humor, or there is the game of egoic power. No wonder Mencken wrote that “Every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow citizens, usually by force; this messianic delusion is our national disease.” We have chosen egoic power and politically correct thought police; grim Victorian reformers pretending to be defending civil rights; messianic new paradigm thinkers who are going to save the planet and heal the world. They should all trade two pounds of ego for one ounce of laughter.
[ONE TASTE, December 7]
“Laughter” - Bruce Cockburn
A laugh for the way my life has gone
A laugh for the love of a friend
A laugh for the fools in the eyes of the world
The love that will never end
Ha Ha Ha...
Let's hear a laugh for the man of the world
Who thinks he can make things work
Tried to build the New Jerusalem
And ended up with New York
Ha Ha Ha...
A laugh for the sun redballing
Through the thermal inversion haze
A laugh for the nuclear good-time boys
Numbering all our days
Ha Ha Ha...
A laugh for the newsprint nightmare
A world that never was
Where the questions are all "why?"
And the answers are all "because."
Ha Ha Ha...
A laugh for the dogs barking at our heels
They don't know where we've been
A laugh for the dirty window pane
Hiding the love within
Ha Ha Ha...
Tapping our feet to an ancient tune
A laugh for the time gone by
A laugh for me and Kitty in the delivery room
Waiting for the child's first cry
Ha Ha Ha...
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