Your wellbeing: laugh, be satirical and be well
A few of you will know that I have launched my campaign to run as an independent candidate for the presidency of the United States.
Revd Chris McDermott, Lead Chaplain at the Meeting House
Not such a ridiculous idea when you survey the current scene in the USA! My key policy will be to restore the twist as America’s national dance – make it a veritable dancing national anthem and incidentally address the issues around health and obesity plaguing the country. Exercising your patriotic duty will take on a whole new meaning. We will make America gyrate again!
I will build a big hall – a very big hall, in fact many of them around the nation, where Americans can gather to do the twist to what will be our new national anthem ‘Let’s Twist Again’!
My designated Secretary of Defense – a Quaker – is working on similarly based strategies for keeping the nation safe based on replacing our nuclear programme (oops, I mean program) with ships and submarines armed with missiles full of stern rebukes and biting satire. What’s not to like? (But we will totally ditch our campaign if Bernie Sanders actually runs against Trump in November.)
Before you get your supportive bumper stickers affixed to your cars, bikes, cats etc. I perhaps should point out the facetious character of my comments above. Of course one hopes that America will not fail its national IQ test in November, but surveying the ongoing narrative of the American election one could easily despair.
At times it is only satire that keeps hope alive. There is always the risk that it might offend. One person – a relative in fact - asked me: ‘Don’t you love your country anymore? When will you renounce your American citizenship?’
And again satire is never hugely popular with authoritarian rulers and dictators. One comedian now living in the UK once quipped when asked if there are any satirists in his home country, ‘Yes, they are all dead but they are there!’ The American artist who painted a picture of a nude Donald Trump (try not to imagine it), Illma Gore, has been physically assaulted for her visual satire. Yes, satire can be risky business.
Humour and satire keep hope alive not only on a national and global level but in our personal lives. One of the most inspiring characters I have met was an individual living with the prospect of death from a brain tumor for many years but continued to live and work until the last weeks of her life, always full of laughter, humour and love for her friends and family. She knew the score but was also full of gratitude for the good things in life.
In our lowest moments, humour and a bit of satire can see us through. Balanced with an element of compassion for ourselves and others it may be just the elixir we need to stay well in the most challenging circumstances life throws at us.
Now get out there, do the twist and vote for me!