I’ve laughed for a variety of reasons. Most often, it’s humor - my friend says something funny, an entertaining video pops up on my feed, or I read witty dialogue on my screen. Maybe someone says something out of pocket. Maybe I find myself in an awkward situation.
I’ve never been as fond of laughter like that. Humor is entertaining in the moment, and it’s just that - beyond inside jokes within a group of friends that somehow make their way back over and over again, I could not tell you why I laughed on particular days at particular times. It is, for the most part, unremarkable.
But I could still swear, amid lack of long term memory and the rewriting of time, that once upon a time, our laughter was more than that.
Sometimes, I forget how precious laughter was to us, once. We didn’t have the social knowledge to laugh at jokes or sarcasm, back when everything was new. We didn’t develop enough attachments to spark laughter from fondness or exasperation. We didn’t care enough, yet, to know that something was strange or awkward.
Once upon a time, our laughter stemmed from wonder, and I think it’s a shame that we’ve lost that.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve laughed in wonder in the past five years. And I just don’t understand - why? We’ve never ceased in our capability to wonder at the universe around us. What happened to the joy that used to underpin it?
Even when I’m actively seeking out that precious feeling of joy and wonder I used to feel constantly as a child, I can rarely ever find something that satisfies this. But I think I get it, now: because of all things, the thing that would make us laugh in wonder was magic.
And I think it’s a shame that we’ve lost the feeling of magic being real.
Some things I see on the screen and I really think: wow. That’s magical. I get laughed at, sometimes, for being so easily tricked by onstage methods of creating atmosphere for performances, but I can’t help it - and I see no shame in letting myself be pulled into a magical world when it’s so hard to come by nowadays. It’s easy to focus on what’s hidden and dismiss the magic outright - but there’s joy in being led to believe things, too, if only for just a moment between one breath and the next.
I was at a Chinese supermarket earlier today with my mother and we were looking for groceries. But as the essentials piled up in our cart, I began to notice more and more things my mother added that were not strictly necessary. Things like decorations. Snacks. Comfort food. She tried to convince me to buy a dragon plushie for the New Year’s - I had to tell her that I had entirely too many sitting on my bed already.
This was the first time I could remember pulling my mother away from the candy stall, instead of it being the other way around.
I don’t know what it was. But it’s so hard to happen upon something that gives us the same joy as it did when we were a child nowadays, and as much as it is a shame… I don’t think we have completely lost it. Not yet. And that’s worth celebrating, too.
We do end up buying the candy. It’s sticky and too saccharine sweet, and my mother complains about the supermarket not making it right, but she’s smiling through it all. Eating it with my mother doesn’t feel like a victory, exactly - more like an homage to our past childhood glee.
Enough that somewhere, I can find it in myself to wonder again.
janainaart
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
titsay
