The Serious Mirth Society

We, the Bored of Directors, would like to welcome you to the first official meeting of The Serious Mirth Society. We’re delighted you’re here. Our second meeting will very likely involve hippos (so take heart), but today we want to start with the elephant in the room (not a hippo), and that’s death. It’s one thing we all inescapably have in common, one thing that will absolutely happen to all of us. At some point. (We can’t tell you when. We don’t know.) When it comes down to it, none of us have definitive operating instructions about this life box we received, except for the knowledge that it comes with an expiration date.

We’re addressing death primarily because of fear. People mostly think that death is the worst thing that can happen to us. But it’s not. The worst thing that can happen is for us to spend our time here in this infinite, wonder-full, unfathomable universe feeling mostly fear instead of balancing it out with the many other very vital options available to us. Like joy. Or laughter. If we are going to be afraid of something, we should be afraid of that—of missing out on the fullness of life.

And so, we come to our point: we are deeply concerned that too many of us are overlooking the small–but-gargantuan moments of delight that exist all the time all over the place right in the middle of everyday life. We are so troubled by this oversight that we have formed a society dedicated to promoting and perpetuating the celebration of mirth, a state of “gladness accompanied by laughter.”

We are fully aware that we are issuing this statement regarding the importance of mirth at a time when we may be criticized for doing so. Why are we discussing the importance of joy and laughter when there’s a global pandemic, when people are afraid and sick and dying, and so many things feel fragile and uncertain? Because happiness is serious. It’s vital. Fear is helpful to a point, but it’s a greedy creature, and it tends to talk too loudly, eat up all the food, and leave nothing for anyone else.

Let us be clear: we are not talking about the denial of reality and our necessary participation in caring for all life on this planet. (That would be folly—something completely different from mirth. We will discuss that later.) What we are addressing is the larger reality—that spending time mostly being afraid of death is no way to live. Give fear what it needs to stay healthy and useful, but just make sure it doesn’t shove joy and kindness out of the way in the process.

So what exactly are we supposed to do with this life we received? We can’t provide definitive answers. But our choices make things better or worse, and when we look deeply into the often-laughable, unfathomable, sometimes-ridiculousness of things, it helps. It can help tame fear into a trusty, rightly-sized pet that actually listens when you tell it to sit down.

And so, we at The Serious Mirth Society have vowed to dedicate a great deal of time to exploring the pervasive opportunities for mirth in our lives. We ask you to remember, in this time of contagion concern, that laughter and joy are also infectious, not just diseases. So while you’re doing your part to care for yourself and others in preventing the spread of a virus, we strongly suggest that you also do everything you can to spread joy and delight and kindness and camaraderie in any way you can that makes life better for everybody while we’re here.

We believe this is very, very serious. It is a matter of mirth and death.

We hope you will join us and spread the word.

(Plus, remember—next time, hippos.)