Laughter Isn't Always the Best Medicine

I was watching a video on a social media platform of a comic whose clips I ‘follow,’ and in this one, he had the audience eating out of his hand from the moment he stepped on stage and cracked his first joke. There were images from throughout the room of people laughing and applauding. He was very funny.

And then when the laughter subsided, he went ahead and told the exact same joke again. He paused at its conclusion and there was still some laughter but certainly not as much as the first time he told the joke.

After a slight pause, he repeated the joke yet again, and after very little laughter, he told it again and then again until no one in the room was laughing at all.

He smiled at the now-uncomfortably silent audience and asked, “Since we all now know you can't laugh about the same thing over and over again, why is it that we keep crying about the same thing over and over again?"

I’ve lived in Norwich for almost thirty-three years (those who’ve met me have suggested, unkindly, that it seems a lot longer. Everyone’s a comedian), and it appears to me we keep having the same conversations on the same topics over and over.

The part I find puzzling is that so few of us seem aware that we keep doing this. It’s as if we have decided that talking about a situation and doing something about it are the same thing but with what little research I’ve done on this, I believe talking and doing are two entirely different actions, and that’s why we have two different gerunds.    

A phrase I’ve always loved is, ‘People prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not.’ I don’t think that phrase was coined in Norwich but if you look at us and how we behave, it certainly seems that way.

Pick a topic, and since it is budget adoption season, let’s start there.

Most of us have an internal monologue that begins, ‘If only they would cut (insert a department/activity/program here) they wouldn’t need to raise taxes.’ If only we could agree on what should be reduced, and good luck with that, we’d be correct, but one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

If we cannot agree among ourselves (and we don’t very often) how can we expect the seven members of the City Council to do so? But we’ll point the finger at them if/when our taxes increase or there’s a decrease in the services we have like police, public works, or teachers (and guess which finger we’ll use).   

I once read (and have forgotten the context so supply your own), “Greed is wanting the benefits of community without contributing to it.” And that stings, or should, more than a little bit.

We’re quick to say, “Someone should do something,” meaning someone else, not us. For instance, I want the Grand List to grow (of course), but I don’t want that development project in my backyard. And I appreciate our police, but I don’t want to pay for a new police station which they’ve needed for decades. 

And so, it goes. We keep making the same movie. The actors change, and the lines are updated, but the plot remains the same. But it’s okay because we’re about to start talking about what we should do. Just like we did last time. 

So why isn’t anyone laughing? 
-bill kenny