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Things Are Always Funnier in a Small Community
I’m always intrigued by the moments in my life when I’ve genuinely laughed. I’m 41 now, so I can look back at them.
They happened, sometimes often in certain periods of my life, and sometimes not at all in other periods. Some periods were inherently sad, and so I didn’t experience such moments of transcendent laughter.
But there were many periods of comfort where I did not experience transient laughter. No matter how comfortable the environment was, something was missing to trigger hilarity.
And the difference, now looking back, was whether or not I had a small community of like-minded people with me. The group could be as small as one other person. And sometimes it was. But all it took was that to experience real joy.
A lot of the times when I was laughing during those periods, I was laughing at myself. But it’s a gift to have a small community that makes laughing at yourself fun and not targeted.
True laughter, for me, seems to come from being able to safely laugh at myself in communities where I feel understood. More than comfortable, but understood.
