“The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed.” So said Nicolas Chamfort an 18th century French writer known for his witty and pithy sayings. “A laugh a day” for me is an excellent “prescription” for the stress of the constant barrage of depressing news about civil rancor, the pandemic, war, and inflation. A good sense of humor can’t cure everything but research has shown there are short and long-term benefits of laughter.
The pandemic has transformed me into a writer of letters and postcards. I didn’t think that I would find joy in writing a letter to someone that I have never met in real life.
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Samuel Beckett’s writing often seems to have a religious air about it. Take his most famous play,
Waiting for Godot (1953). Two Chaplinesque tramps – Vladimir and Estragon – wait at a crossroads by a tree for someone who might provide an answer to their prayers: Mr Godot. This is a man who has a suspiciously divine white beard, who ‘does nothing’, and who remains frustratingly absent, despite repeated promises of his imminent arrival.
Vladimir and Estragon pass the time by singing, eating radishes, play acting, and arguing. One of their first bits of comic back-and-forth concerns a discrepancy between the gospels in the Bible. Why is it, Vladimir wonders, that only one of the evangelists mentions that, of the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus, one had repented and was saved while the other mocked him and was damned? The penitent thief is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, but not in Matthew, Mark or John. ‘One out of four,’ mutters Vladimir. ‘Of the other three,