Laugh, And the World Laughs With You
And if it doesn't, laugh at the world anyway -- because spite works, too
Editor’s Note: Have you ever hurt so much, that you’re tempted to ask questions like, “Why, God, why?” Well this Q&A feature is called “Ask Matt,” not “Ask God.” So maybe hump your heathen carcass over to God’s Substack — he’s probably started one, who hasn’t? — and respect Matt’s boundaries. But do send all other questions to askmattlabash@gmail.com
Dear Matt,
You have joined the long list of Witty Carpers pointing out the foibles and shortcomings of our nation. So far, the legacy of your guild has brought us exactly to this point without moving the needle away from insanity and dysfunction. What keeps you going?
Sincerely,
Inquiring Minds
What keeps me going? Caffeine. Gorilla Glue, which I sniff on writing days, just to get the mojo working. Fear. Anger. Resentment. (All the healthy stuff.) The annual Vladimir Putin calendar, which both inspires and arouses. Just look at the cans on Miss August, 2019.
I sincerely wish, of course, that you’d come up with a more convincing pseudonym, lest readers think I wrote my own question, calling myself “witty.” (I was, in fact, voted “Most Witty” in high school — though it was a dull-witted high school with small class sizes, so it was a bit like winning a Teen Choice Award instead of an Emmy.)
But I’m a close enough student of human behavior to realize that buried in your compliment was an insult, which essentially goes: “You and all your wordloaf — and the wordloaves baked by people like you. What does it all add up to? Are you not, as the Apostle Paul said, ‘sounding brass and tinkling cymbals’? Just making noise for noise’s own sake? Convincing yourself that the ‘truth,’ as you see it, matters, when at least half the country has made a peace with a post-truth reality?”
These are fair questions. Some I might ask myself if I was “Inquiring Minds,” as you claim to be. But I often fall back on some of the wisest words I know from one of the wisest people I know on the subject of how to behave when the world is falling apart. No, not Sting and his Po-lice, who sang “When the world is running down/you make the best of what’s still around.” But rather, those of a former profile subject of mine, Father Rick Frechette, who lives on the knife’s edge in Haiti, where the world has never not been falling apart. Of trying to operate in a failing world, he said the following, which will forever stick with me: