Blog Oasis Week Two

We all know that the world’s in a bad mess
And such causes the most of us sadness:
It stems from the creed
That good comes from greed –
And that, friends, is nothing but madness.
(Gregory Dark)




But, since life at most a jest is,
As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is,
Then laugh on - as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Sick or well, at sea or shore;
While we’re quaffing,
Let’s have laughing -
Who the devil cares for more?
Byron, George Gordon, ‘Lines to Mr. Hodgson’

Byron called his time an ‘age of cant and humbug’. I dread that our time be called an ‘age of can and won’t’. We can do it: can build a better world, can protect the environment and the people living in it, can secure the future whilst enjoying the present. We can, but we don’t. Let’s start to change that, heh? What do you say? Let the cry of our age be that we can ... and that we do.


Having said that, of course, the wisest people are those who can ‘wear life …’ (as some sage once advised) ‘… like a loose garment’.
I have been told that the Dalai Lama, asked to encapsulate his advice to the American nation in one sentence, responded with: “Stop taking yourselves so seriously.”
Two sterling bits of advice. In whose quest laughter is a mighty tool.
Much of what happens around us is absurd; much of what happens to us is absurd. The person who can recognise that is not only wise, but blessed.
The tougher life gets, the greater the need to laugh.
An ex-prisoner, a friend of mine, said of life behind bars that he was always in tears. “But,” he added, “half the time, those were tears of laughter.”
The French say that a day without wine is a day without sun. Well, a day without laughter is like a week … like a month without sun.
This is what Arkona has to say about laughter in ‘The Prophet of the New Millennium’ – yes, I know this is self-publicity gone mad! I suppose I should apologise, but instead I’m going to allow you to mock me!
‘“If we laugh to earth ourselves, that is healthy; if to exalt ourselves, sick.
‘“If we laugh in pain that is healthy, at pain it is unhealthy and unwholesome.
‘“If the laugher emanates from love, it is a healthy laughter; if from hatred it is toxic.
‘“If we laugh to scorn the torturers, that is healthy; if we laugh that we may become a torturer, that is depraved.
‘“When the jester mocks us he helps us. When he mocks our neighbours he debases us. When he mocks us he denudes the barbarian; when he mocks our neighbours we become the barbarian.”
Let us make a commitment together, you and I today, to find something about ourselves or our situation to laugh about.
But let not the laughter stop us from doing. Rather let us use it as a spur to do more!



Moaned the girl to the vicar in Leicester
All men could not fail but moleicester.
Said he, “Surely you jeicest.”
Then he fondled her breicest,
And tickled her thigh. And then bleicester!
(Gregory Dark)