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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 1 (April 1, 1939)

The Fear of Frivolity

The Fear of Frivolity.

So, what! If you don't believe it try it on the bailiff next time he calls. Try laughing off your income tax. It'll do you good and it won't do your income tax any harm. Even if you do belong to a club, try laughing at home. When the family have got over the shock you'll discover that you mean more than an extra potato in the pot and a clean shirt over the end of the bed.

Life's a joke, anyway, and you might as well be in on it. After all, taking it fool and buy, there is more to laugh at
My-Oh My! Ain't Life a Lark “… And raises Man above the beast.”

My-Oh My! Ain't Life a Lark
“… And raises Man above the beast.”

page 35 than to cry over. The only consistency in existence is its inconsistency; and inconsistency is the essence of frivolity. If the world were wiser it wouldn't be half so entertaining. If man were less exasperating he would be more enervating. The more seriously he takes himself the less seriously he can be taken.

He has not only got a bee in his bonnet but a whole hive in his head; so he spends his life busily buzzing under the impression that buzziness is business.

But he is not to blame; he is the victim of mess education. From the time he could toddle he has been taught that “life is real, life is earnings.” Consequently, unless he becomes a professional laughologist, he finds that business is the centre of gravity and laughter a bye-product, a bye-bye product—especially laughter in the wrong places. And the joke is that the best laughter always comes in the wrong places. At a board meeting, for instance, where the air palpitates with portent and the chairman's chins quiver quidulously over a debilitated divvy, whilst the secretaries sit like plaster casts from Easter Island, there is always the temptation to smear the end of the nose with ink and turn a back-hand slam over the agenda, or to second an untabled commotion.

To one upon whom there has been laid the curse of proportional representation of fundamental facts the sight of exorbitant earnestness is always a temptation to blow up the show with a charge of giggleite.