Making A Person Sad Is Easy, Making Them Laugh Is Hard. Be The Reason For Their Happiness

LIFE – “Remember when the love of your life left you, your heart broken in tiny pieces?”

LIFE – “Remember how ugly and fat you look compared to your friends?”

LIFE – “Remember that your grandpapa is not with you anymore?”

That is all it takes. One measly line is all it takes to puncture and break a heart. Then we carry the sadness around after that for hours and days on end. We call this sadness profound (even I do it).

One measly line.

How many “great” quotes on heartbreaks are written by writers in their books. One perfectly worded sentence in a book and it brings us to our knees in tears.

Sadness resonates instantly. It doesn’t take much to make a person sad.

Experiment no. 1

Go up to a person you do not particularly like. Because that he/she is a person you do not particularly like, you have thought of bad things about him/her. Just go up to them and say one of those bad things.

That is all it takes to fuck up a person’s day.

People may claim to be stoic and have the “rhino skin”, but deep inside the brain there is that really soft area, that you can literally mush with bad words. Stoicism takes decades of practice. You just cannot wake up one day and say, “Hey, I am going to be stoic today!” It just doesn’t happen.

 

Experiment no. 2

Now take that same person you do not particularly like and try to make him/her laugh.

Go on. The laughter will probably not come. Maybe it will, if you are an exceptionally good comedian. But if you are not, that person will just not laugh.

Because the joke has to cut through –

1. The dislike the person has for you.
2. Personal opinions that decide what is offensive and what is not.
3. Intelligence. If he/she “gets” the joke of not.
4. The current mood. If that person has been morose for the entire day. it probably will not cut through.

Every person has this barrier. These barriers vary for every person. Some might think “yo momma” jokes are offensive and some might think suicide is not something to make fun about. Some people might even go ahead and laugh at themselves. It is all good.

But if the joke was on the fringes of tolerance like the AIB Knockout, it will probably antagonize the person even further, making his/her day even worse. Because you added anger to the already-present sadness.

 

Evoking laughter is hard

It takes herculean effort to make a person laugh. You have to actually go into the pits of sadness where the person is lying and actually get them out, with words. You have to go underground, and bring them to the surface and then take them to heights of laughter.

To find that right combination of words that will actually cut through all the barriers and opinions and make that person laugh.  It is so difficult.

 

Tugging at heartstrings is easy

How many writers have written those romance novels that “tugged” at your heartstrings? You probably name many just out of the top of your head. So many of them.

How many writers can you name who actually made you laugh out loud literally?  Probably much lesser that the number above.

In this world of brittle hearts, it is so easy to make a person sad. It does not take a lot of skill. We may appreciate a medium – be it a movie or a book – for the “humanity” it presented and made us cry. But it just did the easiest job on the planet. You do not need a lot to push a person off a cliff. The gravity of sadness takes care of it.

But to go against that gravity, and to make the person smile and laugh takes so much effort. Of course, some people get it easily while some people like me get laughed at, rather than get laughter as a response.

 

We need a revolution

Shouldn’t we bring a revolution in this aspect? To bring more laughter in this world, in our own weird way? Because making anyone sad is very easy and life is extremely adept at it. Shouldn’t we go against the flow of sadness and the downs of our lives and laugh at it? Laugh at the sadness, the absurdity of it, and show this to the other people too.

So that even they can join in?

And suddenly all the sadness that tugs becomes bearable. Because you know laughter is right at the corner, brought to you by someone. And you will reciprocate too.

We should all work to make laughter a disease – the most viral and contagious one ever.

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