The Fading Smile in Words

— Swami Narasimhananda —

Humour is not funny business. Only a person who can laugh away one’s failings and face the challenges of life with a smile, can even begin to understand true humour. It is difficult to write humour. Making fun of something or somebody is not humour. Humour has as its bedrock the pains of human life. It is like the rose that has to be touched only after tackling the thorns. Humour is not frivolous. It is not just making a joke or writing satire. Joke and satire are dependent on something. They are commentaries on a particular situation. Humour could be something that is neither a joke nor a satire. It could be something independent of any situation, object, or person.

We see a decline in humour in the written word. Writing might have become more serious, but it has definitely lost humour. We live in a world of competition, targets, and deadlines. In this pressure-stricken world, we seldom smile. The pressure to produce and to meet deadlines and targets has only made humour a rare, almost extinct, species of the written word. Humour needs leisure. Of course, not the leisure that finds its way to fulfilment through entertainment but leisure that leads to deep thinking. More studies or more information does not create humour but in-depth pondering without any material gains in view does..

Humour is based on a deeper understanding of the universe and oneself in relation to the universe. This understanding is of the inconsequential nature of everything. It is the understanding that matter does not matter. A deeper spiritual core is at the heart of all true humour. A sense of humour is born when nothing appears to be serious. In the present-day world we are too serious, almost obsessed with the here and the now. We live wearing a kaleidoscopic lens of instant gratification. Any experience that demands an attention of more than a few seconds is too much to handle for the contemporary human being. All our experience is becoming more and more visceral and anything that requires deep thought only ends up constipating our faces.

It is quite easy to complain. That is essentially what a joke or satire about someone or something is. It is rather difficult to transcend the state of complaining and understand the helplessness of a situation that led to the complaint in the first place. That kind of understanding requires one to break the veneer of the apparent and go deep into the cause of everything. It requires thinking. And deep thinking, and often, even plain thinking, has become a rare phenomenon these days.

In the present-day world, we live wearing a kaleidoscopic lens of instant gratification.

While a joke or satire is often specific to a time or milieu, humour is independent of even time or milieu. You can read a well-written piece of humour from a couple of centuries ago and experience the same fun as probably the writer herself or himself experienced at the time of writing that piece. Humour never dies. It is often ignored. It is often difficult to discover. But there is humour in every time, milieu, and person. However, bringing out that humour is not at all easy.

One important reason why we read less and less of humour these days is because of the proliferation of expression. These are the times when a thought is delivered prematurely without it being given enough time for impregnation. We are ordered to conceive ideas. Creativity and imagination have price tags hanging over them as their deadly noose. It requires character to write humour. Character that cannot be bought and sold but can only be cultivated in the garden of life. The question, ‘what is the purpose’, is the antithesis of humour. Purposeless experiments with the written word alone can produce humour. We live in the times of copywriting and copyrighting. These days ideas are seldom pondered upon but are more patented. And one cannot patent or copyright a sense of humour.

Nowadays we have become more technical, technological, and dependent on artificial intelligence. Humour has become the first victim of logical algorithms. The courage to fail and err has succumbed to the narcissistic need for success. When we are unable to succeed according to the alien benchmarks created by others who are ignorant of our predicaments, we flaunt our aimless and endless lives through photographs of what we eat, wear, or see in numerous posts on social media avenues. We forget our physical and intellectual selves in our pursuit to create attractive digital avatars. We become subjects of humour but end up with lesser smiles on our faces.

Only an independent person can smile. Only when one realises the futility of external embellishments, can one be humorous. It needs a person with a freewheeling mind and freedom of thought to produce elegant expressions of humour. Only a mind brimming with originality of content can have the nerve to ignore them and create something that brings a fulfilment of experience without having anything specific as content. Only a person who has known what true knowledge is can afford to smile through words of wisdom.

Structured writing is not humour. One cannot write humour when one is low on confidence. A person wishing to show off one’s knowledge to prove one’s capability cannot write humour. Humour is born in simplicity. Humour is the intersection of intelligence and learned ignorance. Much like the circus clown, who has faded into the memory lanes of history, one can create humour only when one has the confidence and knowledge of all steps and afford to falter or miss some of them. Humour is not ready-made.

Structured writing is not humour. One cannot write humour when one is low on confidence. A person wishing to show off one’s knowledge to prove one’s capability cannot write humour. Humour is born in simplicity. Humour is the intersection of intelligence and learned ignorance. Much like the circus clown, who has faded into the memory lanes of history, one can create humour only when one has the confidence and knowledge of all steps and afford to falter or miss some of them. Humour is not ready-made.

We are nowadays finding it difficult to come across a piece of humour writing and are also finding it more difficult to write one ourselves, because we seldom get bored these days. We have lost the luxury of doing nothing in the race to create things that mean nothing to us. Lightening up the faces and minds of people with deep constructions of wit is a service nonpareil.

Our preoccupation with sense and meaning is completely against humour. Humour is about the courage and willingness to accept nonsense. That is why it is hard to define humour. The fading smile in words, the apparent dearth of humour writing needs serious reflection. We are increasingly losing the patience to be funny. Humour is one of the very few special characteristics of the human being and we need to preserve it.