‘Laugh often’

WE rightly speak of a saving sense of humour. What a precious faculty it is of the human mind. By tickling our minds, a hearty laugh can help relieve many a worry, and ease many a problem.

It can be a cure for the blues and melancholy. It can keep the heart young.

An old Jewish proverb says: “When you are hungry, sing, when you are hurt, laugh.”

Laughter helped the Jews, who often had to endure terrible persecution and suffering, to retain their sanity. What a rich tradition the Jews have of humorous stories.

I doubt if I could have survived in the ministry for 60 years had I not had a keen sense of humour, the ability to laugh at my own foibles and pretensions, and more quietly at other people’s! At the General Assembly occasional touches of kindly humour enriched for me, many a tense or fractious debate. During the Clydebank Blitz of 1940, an air-raid warden pulled a young woman out of the rubble of a tenement building that had been bombed. Noticing her wedding ring, he asked her where her husband was. After brushing the dust off her clothes, she said: “You ask me where my husband is. The coward is away fighting in

North Africa!” Humour continues to be a wonderful coping tool. A world ruled by seriousness alone, would not only be rigid and lifeless, it would be a ‘grave’ world!

The 19thcentury American humorist Josh Billings was one of Abraham Lincoln’s favourite writers. When the pressures of being President became almost overwhelming, we are told Lincoln would often pick up one of Billings’ books. In one of them, Billings says of kindly laughter.

“Give me the laugh that looks out of a man’s eyes first, to see if the coast is clear, then steals down into the dimples on his cheeks, and rides in an eddy there awhile, then waltzes a spell at the corners of the mouth, then bursts its bonds and fills the air for a moment with a shower of silvery-tongued sparks, then steals back with a smile to its lair in the heart. This is the kind of laugh that I love.” I love it too.

Thousands of people of all ages found the Covid-19 lockdowns very trying. Being deprived of face-to-face contact and conversation was, for them, no laughing matter. When my wife and I contracted the virus, which resulted in an even longer period of house isolation, we decided there was no point in complaining about further restrictions. There would be no moaning to the iron and ironing board in the utility room, for we knew they might well have responded by reminding us that ‘no situation is too pressing’! The curtains in the lounge might simply have advised us ‘to pull ourselves together’. Moaning to the cupboard handles in the kitchen, might have resulted in us being told to get a grip! The squeaking door in the hall might well have inferred that we were becoming unhinged. Though the more sympathetic bedroom fan might have sought to comfort us by telling us that ‘our problems would one day blow over!’, it is doubtful if even that would have cheered us up. What did however finally comfort and delight us, was finally getting a negative lateral flow test, and hearing one day on the kitchen radio, that the lockdown rules had been changed, that we could now meet, chat, reminisce, laugh and share a coffee or a meal with friends.

Victor Hugo called laughter, ‘the sun that drives winter from the human face.’ The Covid-19 restriction rules, having finally been eased in recent months, let’s break our faces into a smile, and laugh often.