Authenticity and Laughter

It takes an authentic person to laugh, really laugh. Laughter is a real emotion, as real as it gets.

I posted something about Barack Obama and his laugh when he was running for President, noting that his laugh was a clear indication that he was a truly authentic person. Unusual in politicians.

I thought about this recently as I mourn the death of a friendship. Someone I knew, and thought I knew fairly well, has mostly been promoting an image, an image of himself as something he is not. It’s been mind-boggling to discover. But as I look back on the course of our friendship, I recall that he seldom laughed. He was always too guarded, too careful, too unwilling to let himself really be himself.

A friend recently asked me what it is that I value most in a friendship, and I found myself answering “authenticity”. It’s the measure of who someone really is - and laughter is one of the best yardsticks of it.

As Dostoyevsky once said: “If you wish to glance inside a human soul and get to know a person, just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.”