It’s Friday, Aug. 5, and I just spent the day ringing in my forty-ninth year on this rock. Embarking on my fiftieth year, I will tell you that I hardly planned to live this long. The longevity comes from the laughter.
It can be disconcerting to consider one’s life from the perspective of being closer to the end than the beginning, but only insomuch as self-importance plays a role, I think.
Spending a considerable amount of time peeling back the layers in this town to shed light on things of concern to us understandably lends to the appearance of cynicism and bitterness at times.
But there could be nothing further from the truth.
In what I consider almost painful irony, I read the quote, “Truth fears no questions,” for the first time in the communications building of Dixie State University a few years back. In my work, I have come to witness the placation in that sentiment as it may be presented by that school, but I hold it a self-evident truth nonetheless.
But in the pursuit of truth, we often find answers to questions we simply do not want to know. And at such intersections, we must reconcile with truth and our fallible humanity at the same time.
Robert Fulghum wrote:
“To get through this life and see it realistically poses a problem. There is a dark, evil, hopeless side to life that includes suffering, death, and ultimate oblivion as our earth falls into a dying sun. Nothing really matters. On the other hand, the best side of our humanity finds us determined to make life as meaningful as possible NOW; to defy our fate. Everything matters. Everything. It is easy to become immobilized between these two points of view – to see them both so clearly that one cannot decide what to be or do. Laughter is what gives me forward motion at such intersections. We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it’s because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be. Tears bring relief. Laughter brings release. Some years ago I came across a phrase in Greek — asbestos gelos — unquenchable laughter. I traced it to Homer’s Iliad, where it was used to descibe the laughter of the gods. That’s my kind of laughter. And he who laughs, lasts.”
I could not agree more. Caught sometimes between the hopelessness in the pursuit of truth and what it brings about, and the satisfaction in finding it, you’ll find me looking for common ground with people and laughing with abandon.
As always, thank you for reading.
See you out there.
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Thanks for a wonderful article to cause me reflection this morning.