At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; And the end of that mirth is heaviness” (Prov. 14:13).
Not all laughter is a reliable indicator of what is going on. When someone is burdened with a particular sorrow, or if they are carrying some kind of weight or heaviness, they have a tendency to turn to makeshift means of dealing with the problem. Two of the more common makeshifts would be anodynes and distractions.
Anodynes would be alcohol or painkillers. The sorrow is still there, but the person carrying the sorrow has figured out a way to club the sorrow over the head with a chemical. Sleep aids could be another one. At best, these devices can make the sorrow recede for a bit, but they are not in any way a cure or a solution. You wake up in the morning with a hangover, and yet, mysteriously, the best girl you ever had is still gone.
The other device is what this proverb is pointing to. The person who is sorrowful wants to be diverted. He wants distractions. He might throw himself into a frenzy of activity—hang gliding, rock climbing, bungee jumping. He might seek out entertainments, such as plays, concerts, movies. Or he might go in for comedy.
He might do this by following stand-up comedians, or he might go one better and become a stand-up comedian. The reason we have cliches like “the tears of a clown” is because of the truth that this proverb points to. Some of the funniest people in the world can be pretty cynical or mordant on a personal level.
The heart is weighed down with sorrow, and the joke is really funny, and you laugh. But that laughter is like your breath on a cold day. It is there, really there, but only for a moment. And when it is gone, the sorrow is not gone. The second half of the proverb hints at the possibility that the temporary excursion into mirth just made a hard situation worse.
