LAUGHING ON THE OUTSIDE; CRYING ON THE INSIDE

CLOWNING AROUND

This is a thought I've often had and I have the sneaking suspicion that I have mentioned it before, but I can't be sure.  Truth to tell,I get it from two sources.  One is the French Canadian saying: "Ce n'est pas parce qu'on rit qu'on a pas l'envie de pleurer."  It says a lot and goes deeper into the soul than the title of the song quoted in the title of this blog. I think that the first time I heard this was at a wake that I was attending with my mother and father.  The deceased was a very good friend of the family on my mother's side.  I also had come to know the deceased through her many visits to my grandmother.  She would often be there when I went to the apartment for lunch from school.  Of course we got to be friends, and of course she always waited for me to leave before saying anything nice about me in front of me.  When she died, my mother told me, "If you want to come to the wake, we will take you.  This lady really liked you.  She was so happy that you were comfortable around old people."  I remember feeling good about that, but then I remembered that I had lost a super source of great stories about what it meant growing up in Quebec in the 19th century.
This was, as you can now appreciate, a VERY French-Canadian wake.  Cigars, a sip of something now and then, and here and there.  Loud talk and lots of laughter.  I didn't have the desire to laugh.  But everyone, well, almost everyone, seemed to be having a good time.  I decided to go right to the top.  My Grandfather, Joseph.  I knew he would give me a straight answer.  So I asked, straight from the shoulder, "Why are they laughing?  I expected a religious, catechism answer.  Instead I got the proverb, "Just because we're laughing, doesn't mean that we don't have the yen to cry."
Well, number one, I could never imagine Grandfather Joseph having the yen to cry.  Not him.  Number two, I came to understand the meaning of that proverb over the years, I think.  Know what?  I am still working on it too.
Two quick examples.
I have an Irish friend.  Priest.  Smart.  Very smart.  I've learned a lot from this guy.  He knows it too.  He likes me because I am not afraid to admit that I have learned from him and still do.  He likes me too.  But I talk back.  Not sass, just straight talk.  Inevitably, when I talk back, or state something that he doesn't like, comes the ripping, cutting insult.  I always react by laughing.  That does it, then the invective gets downright rich.  More laughter.  That doesn't mean that I don't have the yen to cry.  We're still friends.  It's one of those love/hate relationships between a Franco-American and an Irish guy.  Neither one of us will cry at the other's funeral, whichever comes first.  [Should I have said "goes" first?]


It's cultural too.  I have lived in some countries where great embarrassment brings out an uncomfortable laugh.  It's the only escape.  I learned to beware of the "tremendous sense of deprecating humor that these people have."  It didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't seeing a sense of humor.  In many cases, I was seeing an escape from tears. I once saw a poor family lose their beast of burden to a heart attack.  They sat on the still warm carcass, shaking their heads and occasionally laughing at their plight.  I knew that what they really wanted was to cry.  Human respect didn't allow for it.


Human beings are a very complex organism.  Also, very interesting. How else could so many of them write so many things about them without repeating the same thing over and over again?  You have an answer to that one, I wanna hear it. x(;-)-[--<