The World Is Beautiful

The Real Laugh

By Wampus Reynolds

USUALLY, A PIECE of writing like this would follow the well-worn path of saying something like “I was grumpy and mad at silly things big time but then I saw a child giggle at a sparrow with a daffodil in its beak and then I remembered, gosh darn it, life is beautiful.” Now mind you, I enjoy those pieces—forgetting and remembering is a universal phenomenon, a cycle we all can identify with—but sometimes it’s hard to remember in this recent situation.

Right now (at the time of this typing), we are at the part of the movie where there’s an imminent crisis on the plane and a passenger is panicking. “I can’t take it! I gotta get off this plane!” Then comes the part where the audience cheers when the flight attendant gives that passenger a good slap to get a hold of himself. Sure, the crisis still continues, but people are working hard to get this plane to the ground.

Wait, that analogy is a tad off. In our version of the movie, the pilot and co-pilot are the ones panicking to get the plane down when it isn’t ready. “We don’t get paid if this plane doesn’t land! The tail section is the part that will suffer the damage so that’s not so bad all the way up here, right?” The flight attendant with the mean slap is about to lay hands on another passenger who doesn’t have his seat in an upright position. “Come on, sir. This plane is landing. Sure, it’s landing in a spectacularly ill-advised and potentially tragic manner, but we have always put our seats up in the past. Let’s do it again.”

We are in the times of hard slaps and serious realizations. My child had an epiphany that I am as boring during the day as I am at night. We’ve all realized bakers are geniuses and some even deserve a pro-athlete’s salary. We’ve learned that teachers have methods to what concepts they present to kids and when they do so—and that yours may not be ready to calculate the odds on whether the Facebook meme that Aunt Janet posted is a lie (turns out it’s three to two).

I am shocked to grasp that I actually miss going places—even to open mics, where comedians try out new material and the material seldom works. Those painful silences will immediately inform you of a failed joke. But once in a while, you get the Real Laugh.

The Real Laugh in standup comedy is the moment when the comedian gets us to see something with their eyes. That new insight surprises us, and we react with laughter. It’s a moment we equate with art, offering a new perspective to us. Of course, the huge majority of comedy isn’t art—I’m not saying “from what part of the chicken does the McNugget come?” is Rembrandt.

That real laugh reminds you of the best part of humanity: the ability to see life through other people’s eyes—for that matter, if you’re truly empathetic, let’s include the eyes of any life form. That’s what the best art in any form does. It makes you see things anew.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the movie, before the crisis, when the plane cruises at a comfortable altitude. The characters are being introduced via dialogue with lots of exposition. One passenger, a large imposing man with a cowboy hat, notices a very nervous and upset passenger, an elderly woman in a shawl, across the aisle crumpling and twisting her napkin. He holds out his phone and leans over. She shrinks back in fear until she notices a video playing on the phone. She laughs and relaxes. The video is of a child giggling at a sparrow with a daffodil in its beak. Gosh darn it, life is beautiful.