The Virtures of Laughter
(March 23, 2024)
I was a depressed high school student, feeling misfit, bizarre, and good for nothing. That’s when I read Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) by V. E. Frankl for the first time. The part which left me the strong impression was author’s observation about incarcerated people’s chance to survive; At the end of days, the prisoners sometimes saw the sun setting in orange and purple colored sky. Those who felt it beautiful could make it through tomorrow. Those who were deprived of the feeling couldn’t.
Our appreciation of beauty is one of the basic human properties. So is our appreciation of laughter, I believe. Of the title of my blog Let’s Laugh to Live, the reverse Let’s Live to Laugh is also true is what I want to believe. John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) in Sullivan’s Travels (1941) survived because of laughter, and he gains will to live because he wants to laugh.
So please observe your friend (and people close to you). If your friend appears not smiling at a man slipping on banana peel, you’d better advise her/him apply for counseling.
Frankl, V. E., Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946.
The book is available from many publishers in many languages. I can’t remember publisher of the edition I read so many years ago.
Sullivan’s Travels (1941), produced by Paramount Pictures, written and directed by Preston Sturges.
