“I intend to live forever, or die trying.” -Groucho Marx

The audience is booing the 100-year-old comic for boring them with the same old joke. Under his breath, the comic mutters, “God, don’t let me die up here on the stage, let me kill the audience.” Everybody in the audience keels over like reaped wheat. The comic cries,“God,I was speaking metaphorically!” A voice replies, “In that case, either write a new joke before you step off the stage, or be taken literally.”

The subject of today’s seriously funny philosophical post: The finite and infinite benefits of writing a new joke, where fatal metaphors, namely Father Time, a.k.a. the Grim Reaper, do not get the last laugh. The finite benefit: Writing such a joke focuses our imagination on a timeless state of consciousness where there is nothing to do but be happy, and all of time to do it now.

The infinite benefit: We realize our greatest desire now.

“Life everlasting in a state of happiness is the greatest desire of all men.” –Joseph Franklin Rutherford

Well, most men and women desire infinite happiness, because that desire is imprinted in the consciousness of the species.  Let us retrieve it now, like an archived video, by imagining our happiest now ever, and writing a new joke.

The 1000-year-old comic is killing the audience, splitting their sides, busting their guts, rolling them in the aisles, plotzing with pleasure. He goes, “God, you’re a great audience!” Then he hears a voice say, “Well, we haven’t heard that joke in 900 years!”

The new  joke is the old metaphor of Heaven on Earth, retold with creative imagination, before that faculty gets bored stiff.

“It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.” –Martha Gellhorn

Our new joke slays that boring old metaphor of Father Time as our life’s sower and reaper, and lets us recapture our infinite happiness now.

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” –Susan Ertz

We know what to do, every moment of every day of our life, come rain or come shine: we die laughing at the fatal metaphor of life.

“If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole.” –Swami Vivekenanda

No worries! Only our ego plotzes when we laugh with the gods. We create a new one by writing a seriously funny philosophical joke.

The funniest comedian in the universe, playing to a quiet crowd at a posh retirement resort, holds up a sign that reads: “HOW MANY OF YOU THINK THIS IS HEAVEN?” All their hands go up. The funniest comedian in the universe spins the sign so it reads: “WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS HEAVEN?” and points a boom mic at each hand-raiser in turn. The first one says, “Because the food is to die for.” The next says, “Because the golf is to die for.” Another says, “Because the boutiques are to die for.” And so it goes, till the boom mic swings to the last member of the crowd, an obese female songstress, who says, “Because everybody here is deaf.”

Well, if there is a time for every purpose under Heaven, what better time than now, to write a new joke and laugh with the gods!

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” –Voltaire