It’s probably not news to anyone here, but apparently Donald Trump doesn’t laugh. People have scoured the archives to find footage of him caught mid-chortle, but to no avail. He simply doesn’t laugh. One journalist discovered that his father didn’t either, and apparently thought laughing indicated weakness, and implied being a push-over in business. Cultivating a sense of humor was not high on his list of priorities for the young Donald. How different, I wonder, would America look right now, had it been bumped up the list a bit.
We laugh less and less, especially those of us who work full-time. Admittedly, there isn’t a lot to laugh about right now. I certainly feel as though my funny bone has gone into full-on hibernation mode. But increasingly I feel the need to go and drag it, feet-first, from its slumber. It needs to be lured out of its lair because I believe that laugher is imperative for my well-being.
I think there are few emotions as pure and cathartic as laugher. It shows a freedom of spirit, a willingness to revel in the joy of a moment. I have never understood the response when someone hears a joke and opines, “that’s funny.” Don’t TELL me, I want to say, SHOW me, with an upward inflection of the lips and the emission of noise.
In his poem “To My Mother,” the poet George Barker described his Irish mother sitting at her table, “huge as Asia, seismic with laugher.” How I love this image. It reminded me of my great aunt, who, when she laughed, gave herself over fully to the emotion. She was a gentle and reserved person, and her laughter wasn’t loud or raucous, but when she laughed her face creased, her body shuddered, and tears rolled in rivulets down her cheeks. When I conjure her in my mind, it is this picture which forms and warms me from the inside out.
In August, as we emerged, somewhat shaken from Lockdown, we booked three nights away in Donegal for a break by the sea. Our friends had snapped up one of the remaining rooms in a hotel on Rossnowlagh beach and we secured an AirBnB in the countryside nearby. So pleased with myself that I had managed to find accommodation at all, such was the clamor for rooms, my research was far from impeccable. Three times my long-suffering husband drove through the tight, windy streets of Ballyshannon village to find our lodgings. We drove on through a wind-blasted landscape, scouring the countryside, through biblical rainfall. Finally, a phone call later, we found it down a potholed lane. The eco-cabin I had booked was small and cramped. The fairy lights and wood-fired burner which, from the photos had cast a magical glow that I was certain would delight the children, remained unlit. The washing facilities were 300 meters away, up the aforementioned lane, in a separate area, named “Base Camp.” I lacked the necessary footwear to comfortably make this trip without very wet and muddy feet. At 5am that night when the small child required the toilet, it seemed longer still.
But, when we made it to the restaurant which our friends had booked, the clouds began to lift. The rain, which minutes before had driven in sideways off the Atlantic, abated, and the sky became less slate gray, and shot through with silver and ever so faint streaks of pink. Over dinner and the second bottle of house red, we swapped stories about previous trips to Donegal, and I recalled one disastrous walking trip while at University. Near Glencolmchille, a tiny village perched on the edge of the Atlantic (“next stop Canada,” the owner of the youth hostel used to say) a PhD student decided to take a group of us on a longer route through lashing rain, to see some Neolithic stones. The stones held a special significance to him and his (very niche) area of study, but less so to a group of 10 sodden students with their inadequate waterproofs, leaky boots and thoughts fixed firmly on the pints of Guinness in the local hostelry later. Round and round we trailed after him, as he poked at the ground with a stick. “I was sure it was here,” he droned on.
Something about this story, after the stresses of a global pandemic and my own hopeless navigational skills, made me laugh, and once I started, I found I couldn’t stop. I crumpled, unable to get out the words, wiping my eyes and howling. It felt alien. Euphoric, an outpouring of relief to be sitting with our friends, together at last, in the warm glow of a restaurant over scallops and wheaten bread and comforting lilt of the Donegal accents. The next day my stomach ached, a happy pain which reminded me to exercise these muscles more often.
Anne Lamott says that laughter is carbonated holiness and I think she has encapsulated it exactly. We are meant to laugh. It is a salve, a benison, a tool in our arsenal to help us cope when life is heavy. A day without laugher is a wasted day and to find our tribe, people who can ignite our sense of humor, is essential, to keep us sane. I wonder how our world may look today if leaders had been allowed, indeed encouraged, to laugh more? Would they be wired differently, and would their outlook be any different?
Laugher is a gift, God given. I think it would behove us all to do it more.
Helen McClements is a mother, writer and teacher from Belfast. She can often be heard on BBC Radio where she shares her musings on 'Thought for the Day'. In contrast to this, she writes a blog called www.Sourweeblog.com, where she unleashes her frustrations at juggling parenthood with work and the vagaries of life.
