by DERWIN PEREIRA
Tell me honestly: Would you not prefer comedy to tragedy? I mean, comic works of art to those that are tragic?
True, tragedy reaches the heights and touches the depths of the human condition. To read Shakespeare’s King Lear, for example, is to understand how pride and folly conspire to inaugurate the tragic downfall of a good king. We cry our hearts out at the spectacle of a great man having been reduced to a pauper of fate, his kingdom fallen, his beloved daughter Cordelia gone.
But what then? We close the book, we wade out into our own lives, we see misery all around us, we become a part of it, and we return home with our personal tragedies of the day. King Lear does not rescue us from our own fallen kingdoms, great or small. We live disconsolate.
Then, take comedy. Comedy does not challenge fate: It mocks it. Even fate cannot deprive humans of the joy of laughter because, to laugh in the face of chance is to say that no fate is so powerful that a human cannot overcome it with scorn.
This is why I prefer comedy to tragedy in my engagement with the world.
To speak of comedy is to speak of Charlie Chaplin. He teaches us how to laugh. Chaplin’s iconic figure is that of the tramp, an everyday figure who bumbles, fights and ducks his way through life in a world where the odds are stacked against him. When the tramp falls, we laugh. But we do not laugh at him: We laugh with him. Chaplin wins: Fate falls.
Laughter is therapeutic. When I am sad, I do not look for more sadness. I look for a way out of it. I look for comedy. I want to watch a film that can make me laugh, that can remove me from my own circumstances and that can take me to a happier world vicariously. The means could be a sitcom or a conversation with friends held over the bantering fellowship of laughter. What is important is that I should laugh and not cry. I have done enough crying for a lifetime, betrayed by people whom I loved and ignored by those whom I thought I had recognised and welcomed as my own. I have had had enough of tears. I want laughter.
I want laughter because tragedy lacerates the mind and comedy heals the wound. I want to be healthy in mind so that I can give some balm to those whose bodies are suffering. When I laugh, I am happy, and when I am happy, I am free to share my happiness with others who cross my path. When I am sad, I can share my sadness only with those who are sad. But why should they want to carry the weight of my existence on their already-overburdened shoulders? Why?
So, friends, laugh your way through life as well as you can. Certainly, King Lear is irreplaceable, but it is not the whole of existence. Nor is Charlie Chaplin, of course.
But when you have cried enough for Lear, laugh for yourself. Be Chaplin. Be me
