Dear friends,
As the weekend winds down and a new week approaches, I find myself thinking about laughter.
Lately, many conversations seem to circle back to the same feeling: the world feels heavy.
The news cycle rarely pauses—politics, wars, uncertainty unfolding faster than we can make sense of it all. Even in casual conversations with friends, there is a quiet fatigue in the air.
And yet, in the middle of such seriousness, laughter still finds its way in.
A misplaced comment.
An unexpected observation.
An old memory of your child’s antics.
A moment of absurdity that makes everyone in the room smile.
It was after one such moment yesterday that a line I first encountered years ago while studying French literature returned to me—this time with new relevance.
In the prologue to Gargantua, the 16th-century humanist François Rabelais writes:
“Mieux est de rire que de larmes écrire, pour ce que rire est le propre de l’homme.”
“Better to write of laughter than of tears, because laughter is the defining trait of being human.”
Rabelais was the creator of the droll giants Gargantua and Pantagruel, who famously peed all over Paris—yes, his humor was often carnivalesque and physical, the sort that makes you laugh and grimace at the same time.
But Rabelais did not mean that we should smile politely all the time. Far from it, his humor was a visceral satire of his era, turning upside down rigid institutions, people, and beliefs while advocating for a more liberal spirit that trusted human potential.
At times, it does feel as though we are stepping backward in history.
And yet Rabelais’s reminder remains surprisingly relevant.
Laughter does not deny the seriousness of the world.
Laughter simply refuses to let it consume our humanity.
We laugh to acknowledge the absurdity of the world.
We laugh so as not to succumb to its preposterousness.
We laugh to remain slightly above it all—as witnesses.
In this sense, Rabelais’s insight feels deeply Vedantic. The world itself can seem like maya—the ever-changing theater of appearances. The invitation is not to withdraw from life, but to participate in it without losing one’s inner balance.
Seen this way, laughter becomes something more than amusement—it is a quiet form of wisdom.
Not because life is easy.
But because humor allows us to carry its weight with a little more grace.
A similar realization appears two centuries later in Candide. In Voltaire’s tale, Candide wanders through a world of earthquakes, wars, cruelty, and injustice before finally arriving in Constantinople. There, inspired by the quiet dignity of a Turkish farmer, he reaches a modest but powerful conclusion:
“Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
“We must cultivate our garden.”
Even if everything around us seems awry, we still have our own small patch of ground to tend.
Perhaps that is why laughter still matters, especially now.
Not because the world is light, but because it reminds us that we can still meet it with lightness.
So let us laugh, when we can, at the absurdities and oddities of the world—and then return to cultivating our own small garden.
Meaningfully yours,
Anu Prabhala
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