|
Tears and Laughter
by Anwar Shaikh |
Like physical existence, psychological state of
mind is also subject to opposite poles such as pain and pledsure, hope and
despair, fear and favour.
Tears and laughter are also expressive of opposite
conditions of mind but it is not always possible to draw a line between the two;
for example, a woman's tears may not be the symbol of helplessness but a snare
to fool a man. Similarly, the laughter of a jester, whose job it is to make
people laugh, may be a masquerade for his internal grief. Both tears and
laughter are likely to be deceptive; the former may be no more than a
crocodile's tears and the latter a grinning of a rhesus monkey.
Since society has not attained the level of perfection
as yet, survival without a certain amount of ambidexterity is not possible. This
elevates tears and laughter to the art of living. However, morality of this art
depends on its purpose. Crying and laughing when others are crying and laughing,
is an act of worldliness, and possibly conducive to survival but laughing when
one should be crying, and vice versa, are acts of dubious value.
Tears and laughter are naturally subject to
manipulation because they involve visible physical expressions: tears are seen
and laughter is heard, but it is not always clear why a person is really crying
or laughing. This is what gives rise to subtlety in tears and laughter, making
them tools of mischief, if one so desires. They can equally be a safety net
against perils of straightforwardness, which calling spade a spade may involve.
Thus, it is evident that there is a built-in secrecy in tears and laughter; it
lends depth to life, which otherwise may be plain and shallow.
This ambidexterity imparts very high significance to
woman's tears because they raise her to the status of the Universal Riddle,
which tempts man to pamper and praise her for gaining her favour. This is why
tears to a woman are what paw is to a lion, talon to a falcon and sword to a
warrior. Overtly, her tears are indicative of submission, supplication and
suavity but covertly, they may be the silken noose of a hangman - soft to touch
but the sure ambassador of destruction.
Put differently, a lady's tears are to man what a
cobweb is to a fly; it looks delicate, delightful and desirable, yet it is
powerful, paralysing and predaceous. Apparently, it is a messenger of weakness
but actually its delicacy is the secret of its strength. When this point is
looked into carefully, it reveals a fundamental psychological truth, that is,
man wants to dominate through toughness but woman longs for supremacy through
tenderness. The tears of a woman contain the glow of submission, which man
naturally expects, but carries hidden sternness to snool him. In a vulgar
expression, a woman's tears are the cheese, which leads rat of a man into a
lethal cage.
Woman's laughter in relation to man is considered a
message of desirability. In societies still governed by the rules of old
morality, a woman's smile on man is taken for an invitation of romance, even
when she may have smiled quite innocently. Such an innocence, when expressed
unwisely, may lead to grim consequences. Man's act of laughter, on the contrary,
lacks seriousness though members of the opposite sex may detect in it the
meaning they desire.
Despite what I have stated above, tears and laughter
are two distinct acts, which are diametrically opposed to each other; they
express two separate states of the mind i.e., misery and mirth and, therefore,
possess intrinsic values. This is the reason that most people cannot laugh when
they ought to cry, and vice versa, and this is why they cannot be classified as
ingredients of hypocrisy despite the element of ambidexterity they may contain.
It is the result of their distinctiveness that life replete with tears is a form
of agony, which requires the nectar of laughter to remedy it. After this general
description, I may describe them as two separate entities. Let us take tears
first:
A. TEARS
1. Tears are a sign of helplessness.
Though dole and delight are largely dependent on man's
Free Will and its execution, the free choice and action do not always act as a
guarantee of satisfaction. It is because an individual is not free from the
social attitudes, which directly or indirectly can influence his dreams. Again,
he is tied to the forces of nature, which usually dictate, and are reluctant to
compromise. Civilisations have been destroyed by human follies as well as the
forces of nature, and there is not much that one can do about it.
This is what demonstrates man's helplessness, and it is
represented by tears. In fact, as a general rule, helplessness and tears go
together. Perhaps, this is the reason that a human baby comes into this world
crying. Nothing is more dependent on others for survival than a human baby,
which has to be nurtured for many years. It is this individual insufficiency,
which drives a person into the arms of society for protection, leading to
rituals, cusloms and laws. Even when these are not quite fair, they serve their
purpose through a system of prize and penalty, which comes into being as a part
of social living.
2. The above remarks that tears are a sign of
helplessness, are only generally true. They express different meanings in
relation to man and woman. A man is supposed to be staunch, stern and severe.
Therefore, his tears usually count as a proof of cowardice and unmanliness, and
he is inclined to suppress them to maintain his natural toughness, which may be
slighted by the tenderness associated with woman's tears.
However, this is not an infallible rule; when a man
weeps for the loss of his honour or the departing loved ones, his tears are
respected.
Conversely, a woman who does not cry, is considered a
disaster, a demon, a devil. The reason is that custom over a period of centuries
has come to look upon woman as a model of softness, serenity and sweetness.
These are the indications of helplessness which, not only appeal to the
chauvinistic tendencies of man, but also suit his purpose, which is dominance of
the fair sex. A crying woman is ready to submit, surrender and supplicate but
the tearless woman is a source of threat, torment and torture to man's sense of
dominance. It is for this reason that man invented customs and laws, which
enabled him to attain godly status turning woman into a devotee, who could do
nothing but win the favours of her divine husband through weeping, wailing and
whingeing.
Whereas a man's tears, being the symptoms of cowardice,
may provoke disgust and revulsion, a woman's tears, which are considered the
ambassadors of helplessness, seldom fail to arouse compassion and sympathy even
when they are false, foul and facinorous.
3. Tears of a woman are really devastating when she
happens to be a loved one.
Man is a seducer but he is also a passionate lover.
When he is a seducer, a woman's tears have the same effect on him as rain has on
a desert, music on a mongoose or poetry on a savage. It is because his love for
her is fake. His pretended love is an obscene form of lust, which being a part
of animalic passion, seeks satisfaction at the expense of the woman he pretends
to love. For total lack of devotion, his heart acts as a stone which cannot be
penetrated by her tears and they roll down from her eyes like water from a
mountainous slope. Exactly, the opposite becomes the truth when a man is truly
in love vvith a woman. Her glances act as the arrows of Cupid which never fail
to perforate his heart and it acts as a tillage yearning for the tears to
fertilise his hope, hilarity and happiness.
Equally true it is that the sincerity of woman's tears
turns a beast into a man, who feels a spark of devotion kindle the abyss of his
instinctive darkness. It is the heart inspired by the loving tears of a woman
that acts as the fountain of fine arts such as poetry, painting, dance, drama,
music and sculpture.
4. Tears are a woman's best friend because they appease
man's urge of dominance and mollify his attitude towards her. Thus they prove
what rain-drops are to a bonfire fine food is to a starving man or cool breeze
is to a person on a hot sunny day.
This apparent submissiveness of woman's tears turns
them into a silken noose which is lethal yet soft to touch and delightful to
look at. In fact, woman's tears are the most effective weapon in her armoury of
defence. Nothing matches them in effectiveness when she uses them adroitly. This
is the reason that a woman's tears during love-making seldom fail in securing
the most hazardous promises from man.
However, this situation seems to be coming to an end
slowly. The major reason is women's newly acquired rights, which enable them to
charge their husbands with rape; another factor is their increasing dare, which
prompts them to settle most issues with fists; this is reducing the
effectiveness ot their tears. Perhaps, the most important of all these factors
is the drop in man's sperm-count. Men are experiencing reductions in virility
and thus naturally less attracted to the charms of the opposite sex. Conversely,
women being driven by the zeal of equality are losing their sexual appeal to
men. The woman who looks an amazon in appearance and behaviour becomes what
saw-dust is to a piece of magnet; nectar is to a dead person or a beautiful
scene is to the blind.
5. As a general rule, tears represent grief and fear.
When someone dies in the family, grief is expressed by the relatives and friends
through their tears and languished looks. In the West, tears are usually
resisted but in the East they drown the eyes of the grieved. In certain cases,
even professional mourners are employed to express the grief of the family.
6. Tears are also a source of relief. A person gripped
with fear starts weeping to allay the doleful effect of the situation. When
tragedy strikes, tears serve as a natural form of relief. The person who cannot
cry at the death of a loved one is sure to develop some ailment, physical or
psychological. Tears, thus, serve as a defence of the body.
7. There are some religious and philosophical sects
which hold life itself as a phenomenon of helplessness. Stoics of Greece, who
blamed fate for their sorrows, represent this fact. Some mystical schools of
thought, whether they be Christian or Muslim, advocate repentance through tears.
Thus tears act as the agent of salvation.
8. More than relief, tears can also be the source of
enjoyment. When a dear one missing for a long time, turns up suddenly, tears of
joy roll down from one's eyes. This is an act of reducing the emotional
intensity. In the East, where arranged marriages are the general rule, the bride
and her parents are usually seen shedding tears at this happy occasion.
Tragedy represents the apex in dramatic acts. In a
cinema, or theatre, when such a scene takes place, some people are seen crying
with anguish, yet they relish the tears which allay the effect of their
emotional ebullience.
9. Absorbing tears is considered an act of manliness.
It is usually the cowards who cry. Cowardice is not a virtue but vice. Thus
absorbing tears is tantamount to blotting- paper, which sucks in the unwanted
ink.
10. Tears express the limit of one's endurance. A
person may keep grappling with the caprices of life, but when he can take no
more, he may burst into tears. This marks the limit of his endurance.
11. A man's tears are usually genuine and profound
because he avoids crying to uphold his pride and the demands of his manliness;
when he starts crying, it is an expression of his helplessness which is real and
requires attention. On the contrary, a woman's tears may be a form of hypocrisy
because they come to her so easily and form a part of her natural defence. They
can be highly offensive when a woman wants to take revenge. In such situations,
a woman's tears are what cheese is to a mouse leading it into the cage, what
bait is to a fish and what a mirage is to a thirsty traveller.
12. Tears, it looks to me, influence longevity. As
stated earliet, tears provide relief from the effects of a sudden shock,
humiliation and emotional intensity. As women are prone to weeping, they avoid
the consequences of not being able to weep. Conversely, men who think of weeping
as a feminine weakness, deny themselves the relief that tears provide, and may
thus develop physical and psychological ailments, which reduce their span of
life compared to women.
13. Like everything else, tears are also graded. The
best tears are the ones which are genuinely shed for someone else out of love,
sympathy or pity and the worst tears are the ones which are shed to hide the
truth or fool others.
14. Tears of remorse are the sacred form of repentance.
When such tears are accompanied by a genuine recompense to the wronged, they
lead to narvana.
15. Tears induced by fear, seeking mercy, are to a man
what a deep ugly scar is to a prettv feminine face, or what a violent gale is on
the night of Diwali to the Hindus.
16. Tears that come easily indicate proneness to flight
and reluctance to fight. Such a person seeks easy solution for problems even at
the expense of his honour. Hypocrisy is bound to be the major trait of his
personality.
Such tears are meant to seek mercy, which implies a
guilty mind.
17. Tears have a special significance to woman for
being the medium of her survival. The woman, who cannot use them effectively is
uncouth but the one who can, is an accomplished female.
18. The tears of a wise man are like pearls which are
found in the depth of the sea but the tears of a fool are like the froth which
floats on the surface.
19. Tears have a language of their own; they baffle the
fool, who tries to understand them according to his own wit, but reveal their
meaning to the wise, who can differentiate between truth and triviality.
20. Looking deep into tearful eyes is like looking at
one's own shadow in a lagoon, which invites the observer to fathom the depth of
his own emotions.
21. The large flexing eyes of a beautiful maid,
sprinkling tears of remorse, have a more fruitful message for the frustrated
lover than the rolling black clouds have for a parched field.
22. Tears are the speech of emotions, and cannot be
understood by a stolid person. This speech is expressed in the alphabet, which
is deciphered only by those interested in the heart archaeology.
23. The eyes accustomed to tears caused by the
attitudes of fairweather friends, eventually come to possess greater vision to
penetrate the dark minds infested with guise, guilt and guile.
Such eyes having shed sufficient tears, try to save
themselves the misery of further lamentation, which becomes shameful, painful
and dreadful.
24. The eyes studded with the sanctity of tears, based
on purity, piety and probity, are so high in magnitude, magnificence and marvel
that they challenge the holiness of any sacred place.
25. Tears of distress rolling down from the bewitching
eyes of a woman send her lover crashing whether he be wise or foolish, high or
low, pious or wicked. The weeping eyes of one's beloved have the mystical power
to transfer their anguish to the heart of the lover, whose only remedy is a cure
for the beloved's tears.
What is the charm in such eyes? It is, perhaps, a
divine spark, an unconscious glimpse of the Celestial Beauty, a relic of the
supernatural bliss. It has got to be something of this order; otherwise such
eyes will not be so fascinating, so devastating, so enthralling!
26. Crocodile tears can mislead the shallow-minded but
impart the truth to the wise, who knows the difference between fact and fiction.
27. The babies who seldom cry grow up into fearless
men. Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have been such a baby.
28. Tears may be hideous, hurtful and heart-rending but
as the meanest things lend themselves to artistic beauty, they are no exception
either. The tearful mood of an artist produces the effect which is ingenious,
impressive and inventive.
Lucky is the one who can turn his devastating tears
into happiness redolent with a holy hope and heavenly expectation.
29. Life is short and problematic and one cannot afford
to drown it in excessive tears. Though tears expressing dignity, shame, remorse,
love, etc., are always welcome, we are talking about the tears which are
essentially disastrous, doleful and destructive and make life a continuous
process of crying, cringing and commiseration. Such a life is to be avoided, and
the best means of achieving this goal is one's conduct that minimises other
people's tears.
30. Laughter may provide remedy for tears, but it is by
no means a substitute for them. Never, you try to eliminate the difference
between tears and laughter or mirth and misery. Life is composed of the
opposites; by destroying one you annihilate the other. This is the way of life
for an ascetic, who has turned his back on the world but it does not behove a
real person.
As the sense of right and wrong depends on the
operation of vice and virtue, righteousness cannot emerge without the opposite
force called wickedness. It is the sense of difference between the two that
makes man a moral being; his greatness lies in maintaining balance between the
opposites, and it is best done by fighting the wrong for upholding the cause of
the right.
Laughter may be a remedy for tears, and not the
substitute, but what is laughter?
B. LAUGHTER
Laughter is likely to be a cure for tears, and
not a panacea as food is for hunger and water is for thirst. It is an ointment
for the bruises that create pain leading to tears because it does not remedy the
doleful situations. It provides a welcome relief. Laughter is, thus, more like a
pain-killer.
Laughter is a shell compared to genuine tears, which
are like pearls: the former is the surface of the sea but the latter represent
its depth.
Though there are diversions, tears usually represent
seriousness, sullenness and severity whereas laughter refers to situations
concerning frivolity, jollity and jocosity. It is remarked that only fools laugh
but whoever said that, was the biggest fool himself. Of course, life is a
reality and should be taken as such, but owing to its harshness, it is like a
torrid desert, which is a curse without an oasis. Laughter is that oasis, which
makes life liveable, lively and luring. Life without laughter is a form of
cynicism, a canine mode of life.
Laughter is naturally graded for having many forms such
as smile, giggle, chuckle, smirk, grinning, horselaugh, etc. Each type of
laughter depends on the intensity of amusement aroused by a situation, a mood or
thought. Having said that, we ought to examine the concept of laughter:
1. Laughter is a vehicle of pleasure.
When a person is grieved or fatigued by pressures of
life, their toxic effects build up in his psyche. He feels sad, sore and sullen
and wants to empty his mind of these painful experiences. He looks for
situations that may arouse laughter to drown his sorrows.
In a pensive mood, he does not need a lecture on
physics, philosophy or probity but a parlance on raillery, ridicule and revelry.
Again, over-working is inimical to laughter but play is
conducive to it.
2. The higher form of laughter is the one that when you
laugh, people laugh, and the lower type of laughter is the one that when you
laugh people feel offended.
This is derision known as laughing at others. Though it
may create laughter, it is not really a laughter for being devoid of pleasures.
It is a whore dressed up as a beauty-queen, a wolf in lamb's clothing, a thug
wearing a dog's collar.
3. Laughter is an agent of concealment. When a person
is reluctant to reveal his real feelings, or wants to resort to a pretence or
prefers to hide his ignorance, he seeks cover behind laughter.
4. Laughter is a form of whisky, brandy or gin or
whatever intoxicates you to reduce your awareness of what pricks you and makes
you sad. It is a medium of inducing lightheartedness to make you glad.
5. Laughter is a warmth seeking to melt the frigidity
of wisdom, which is a form of a snowy mountain. Without a partial thaw, this
peak is likely to keep rising. It is sure to make logic supreme, turning humans
into robots.
Man is not a mechanical phenomenon despite the fact
that man's existence is governed by the physical laws like the rest of the
universe, but his practical life is driven by desires; and his greatest desire
is happiness, which is not possible without laughter.
The mould of seriousness, which life is likely to
become through fear, frigidity and frailty, is partially fractured by laughter,
inducing the adults to be childish and carefree.
Laughter is laughter only when it is an emotional
experience. When it is a part of appearance only, it may be an expression on the
face of a rhesus monkey, which is a form of anger, misunderstood for a smile.
6. Laughter expresses gaiety opposed to grief, which is
a trait of tears.
In fact, laughter serves to raise the standard of
civilisation. Trivialities such as distasteful, ridiculous and farcical
situations, when they arouse laughter, become desirable and form part of
morality. At weddings and festivals, the plays of jesters are held to provoke
laughter for this reason. Thus gaudy apparel, music, palatable dishes,
carelessness and the will to be happy, all form part of laughter, though
indirectly. This is what separates comedy from tragedy. The former is delight
but the latter is dole. Without laughter, life will be a long process of
sobbing, lamenting and moaning.
7. Ignorance is laughter.
The person used to philosophical thinking and inclined
to be immersed in realities of life, is likely to become a cynic, who frowns at
what he sees. He loses the ability to laugh and thus becomes less than a human.
Ignorance, which provokes laughter and creates happiness, ranks superior to the
knowledge, that leads to tragedy.
When people form a gathering, their intelligence drops
to a reduced common level and they seem to act in unison. Without any serious
consideration, they commend and condemn together. This mob-mentality is a form
of ignorance. This is what gratifies people when they see a well-executed
tragedy. They do so unconsciously, and this state of the mind is induced by the
mob-thinking, which lowers the intellectual denominator; otherwise nobody enjoys
tragedy.
In fact, tragedy affects one's standard of rational
behaviour; a mother who has lost her child hobbles with grief; a person, who
loses his limb in an accident, talks inarticulately. In such circumstances when
the pain is personal, one does not laugh. However, when the tragedy is
impersonal but not quite severe, it becomes ridiculous and provokes laughter. A
person slipping on a banana skin, or the flying skirt of a nun on a windy day,
are some of the examples.
Alternatively, one can call it one's activation of
primitive instincts, which lacked moral conscience.
8. Laughing, when others laugh is a sign of maturity.
Keeping quiet under such circumstances may be taken as a sign of ignorance or
arrogance. It is only the immature who look odd for avoiding harmless
participation, which is a sign of friendship.
9. Laughing is an art: a fool laughs when others cry
and vice versa. It is an index for the maturity of a person.
A wiseman keeps control of his lips when he laughs but
a fool laughs for the sake of laughing. Laughter of the former has a musical
effect whereas laughter of the latter is like a cacophony, which causes
disquiet, distress and disturbance. The way a person laughs indicates, whether
he is wise or foolish. It expresses one's standard of accomplishment.
10. Laughter is a mask for one's personality. A coward
when challenged, may laugh to treat it as fun; a fool may use it to cover his
folly; a stolid person may employ it to show that the intended insult of his
adversary is no more than a joke.
11. A serene smile is more expressive of happiness than
laughter. The former is like a deep stream perennially flowing with dignity but
the latter is like a noisy waterfall created by a seasonal flood.
A smile is indicative of a heart-felt delight such as
success in an examination, arrival of a baby or realisation of an expectation,
but laughter is something induced by a shallow experience such as jokes of a
clown, seeing a person slip during rain, hearing someone being called funny
names.
A smile brings radiance to the face but laughter twists
it, though in a jocund company laughter is the rule, which provokes further
laughter.
12. Smile comes from within e.g., a mother watching her
baby chuckle, a poet or painter smiling at the hilarity of his poem or stroke of
his brush. Conversely laughter may have an extraneous origin such as tickling or
joking to make someone laugh.
13. Ability to laugh is a blessing but inability to
laugh is a psychological blight. The former is a happy soul, who is usually
cheerful and optimistic but the latter is consumed by pensiveness; he is seldom
pleased but easily displeased. He resents when others laugh but feels jubilant
when people are miserable because misery becomes his second nature.
14. Smile is a part of personal accomplishment because
it is a sign of welcome, a symbol of accord, a token of friendship. The one who
cannot show his friendly gesture with a smile, is a savage enslaved by the
primitiveness of his manners which are ugly, uncouth and undesirable.
15. The deeper a smile the more effective it is. An
ever- smiling person is adorable provided his smile is not a mask to cover his
internal cynicism.
16. Smile has a special relationship with a woman. A
radiant smile on the face of a woman is a message of love, a sign of hope, an
invitation of romance but laughter serves as an ambassador of vulgarity though
in a jocund company it is a symbol of merriment.
17. A natural smile has a high aesthetic value. It
makes the smiler graceful, gorgeous and great. Not only that, it renders the
face beautiful, blissful and bounteous. It is the exact antithesis of angry
looks, which mark the countenance with hardness, hatred and horror.
A hearty smile is a floral gauze for the hard face,
which pines for a natural cover. Only an appreciative heart knows that even when
a plain maid smiles, she is arousing and mirthful.
On the contrary, a false smile is sardonic; it is an
expression of sarcasm, disinterest and antagonism. It is repulsive in nature,
destructive in character and contemptuous in effect. Such a smile is nothing but
a manipulation of the facial muscles.
18. A smile whether natural or artificial, is usually
dependent for its effect on the accompanying tone of voice. A smile followed by
a sweet manner of speech appears as a divine flash, which lightens the heart but
a smile followed by a harsh tone is nothing but a grimace on the face of a
monkey which is deceptive, distasteful and destructive.
19. Ignorance may provoke laughter but wisdom acts as a
check upon it. Yet the one who laughs is not necessarily a fool, and the one who
thinks of laughter as a fool's hobby, is not necessarily wise. Life is a mixture
of laughter and seriousness: both depend on expression but at the appropriate
time.
20. The wisdom that stops a person from laughing is no
superior to ignorance, which reduces the burden of life and makes it less
painful.
21. A fool laughs when he should cry and the wise does
not laugh at the crying fool but feels sorry for him.
22. The tears of a fool are just a mechanical affair
but the laughter of a wise man is an expression of happiness.
23. The one who cannot laugh or cry is less than human.
His emotions are frigid, foul and fearsome.
24. Laughter is shallow, and its shallowness is prone
to make one free from the pains of cogitation. Laughter is too fragile to carry
the burden of serious thinking and the problem it creates.
25. Laughter may not be the reward of life but it makes
the life rewarding by counteracting the unnecessary pains of living.
26. Laughing at others is a vice but laughing with
others is a virtue.
27. The art of laughing at the right time is an art of
living but the art of crying is sheer hypocrisy because laughing may admit
manipulation genuinely, but tears do not. Unless tears are genuine, they rank as
crocodile tears.
27. Rising above the emotional states of laughing and
crying as the Stoics suggested, is not a state of perfection but a condition
which turns humans into robots. Humanity, without these traits is not possible
because life is the reaction of the opposites.
28. Laughter is the best means of harnessing a
mob-gathering but a select committee or assembly may not need it at all, and if
it does, the dosage must be minimum.
29. The ability to laugh heartily when appropriate, is
a blessing. In such circumstances, it is a source of great pleasure, an elixir
for many ills. Thus, making people laugh to forget their sorrows is an act of
worship.
30. Laughter is persuasive whereas crying is
dissuasive, generally, though occasionally the opposite may be the truth.
A teacher who makes his students laugh before lecturing
on a monotonous subject, can hold their attention but a tragic story is usually
disturbing.
31. Laughter is a kind of clowning, which may assume
several forms e.g., ludicrous dress, make-up, wrong pronunciation, or misuse of
words.
32. The boss who acts as a clown to make his
subordinates laugh, is likely to lose his dignity.
33. The best laughter is the one which persists in
memory, and for years, serves to dispel one's gloom and the sense of pending
doom. Such a laughter is to life what a dense cloud is to a wayfarer in a
parching desert; delicious food is to a starving person; hope of life is to a
dying patient.
34. It is a sorry state to be laughed at by others.
35. Those who habitually make fun of others, are likely
to become a laughing stock themselves.
36. Lucky is the person who knows how to laugh at his
own faults and can keep laughing until his vices turn into virtues.
37. Horselaugh is the worst form of laughing. It
exposes the ugliness of one's teeth, bad breath and temperament. Above all, it
expresses one's lack of self-control.
38. A smiling face attracts but a morose face repels.
39. The ability to laugh off provocation is a measure
of built-in safety but the inclination to laugh off serious challenges of life,
is a recipe for disaster.
Thus intelligent laughter is the key to success and
jubiliation.
40. Despite its many shortcomings, laughter is better
than crying. The one who maximises the opportunities for others to laugh is a
saint but the one who works to minimise the chances for other people's laughter,
is a satan.
| 
Previous
Essay
