WE’LL SEE WHO GETS THE FIRST LAUGH

Yet again dear readers, allow me to reassure you that, in my haste, I did not screw up the topic title here: I do, indeed, mean to discuss getting the FIRST laugh.  The traditional expression, of course, being “we’ll see who gets the last laugh”: an expression referring to the notion that the expresser is sagely aware that downfall awaits those that they warn who are, in turn, the one’s currently laughing.  Yes yes, you may mock the expresser now, but just you wait! …right.  Wanna know one of the interesting things about getting that first laugh?  It means that you already GOT to laugh.  Your laugh has happened: you were able to deride the other, hold advantage over them, experience joy at their defeat, exert your will on them, etc etc.  In short, you already got to achieve victory.  You were the bully kicking sand in their face at the beach in the Charles Atlas ad.  And yeah, MAYBE that dude is gonna go risk a stamp and get a book on isotonics and get jacked and come back and punch you in the face, but until that time happens, YOU got the first laugh.

Maybe you'll come back and avenge yourself, but he will DEFINITELY be fooling around with your girl until you do

Let’s go about this from a logical approach for a bit, shall we?  There’s no benefit in getting the LAST laugh.  That’s a hollow victory if I’ve ever heard one.  We’re all on a finite timeline here, and when you get your laugh in EARLIER than the other person, you can experience the joy of that laughter for MUCH longer than the span of the laugh itself, for now you can also look BACK upon that laughter in your twilight years.  Those that laugh last?  The laugh LESS.  They laugh closer to the end than the beginning, and spent much more of their timeline NOT laughing, attempting to take solace in a laugh that MAY happen one day in the future.  That’s a dumb psychological trick best reserved for children that are being good NOW in the hopes of Santa coming later to reward them. 

Does he who laughs last laugh best?  Once again, a pithy saying at best, but let’s say it’s true: he who last first may ALSO be the one that laughs last.  If you laugh FIRST, you are guaranteed to have at least LAUGHED: your laughter is locked in and assured.  Meanwhile, while you hold out hope that one day you TOO will laugh, and it will be the last laugh, and therefore the best laugh, you haven’t laughed YET.  You have no guaranteed your laughter will arrive.  You may, in fact, find that you have expired in your wait for the last laugh, and that the last laugh happened LONG ago: you just missed it, assuming that, since it was the first laugh, it couldn’t possibly be the last laugh.  You failed to recognize the opportunity, because you foolishly assumed that the first laugh was the inferior laugh.

"Since WHEN has it been good to be the first to do something? ...oh"

We see this SO often in training: this preoccupation with getting the “last” laugh, while meanwhile folks are out there busting their hump and getting the first laugh and rubbing it in everyone’s faces.  The mother hens cluck their tongues at dudes exerting themselves, straining, pushing past limits and say “We’ll see how they feel when they’re 40, lol!”  Yeah, well guess what idiot: you’re going to feel like crap when you’re 40 because you were sedentary, while this person is going to feel like crap because they were active.  But in the interim, they got the FIRST laugh, because you spent your 20s and 30s being small, weak and insignificant, while they were out there succeeding.  And just imagine the REAL comedy when it turns out it’s not 40 when these things start to show, but 50, or 60, or 70…or never.  And there they were: just WAITING to get that last laugh, only to expire on their deathbeds having never had the chance to laugh.

There are SO many training opportunities out there that afford the trainee an opportunity to get in the first laugh.  After about a decade of neglecting them, I brought behind the neck presses back into my training.  And upon bringing them back, I heard from all the gurus about how they would cause my shoulders to spontaneously combust in a visceral display of blood and sinew, like a piñata filled with the contents of a butcher shop dumpster.  Well to quote Matt Dimel “Ha ha ha mother f**ker”, I got the first laugh, because I ended up crushing some lifetime PRs that I had plateaued on for years once these got added to my programming.  Meanwhile, what last laugh are the people hoping for on this one?  Healthy shoulders when they’re 80?  Man, that’s gonna be awesome to brag to your great grandkids about.  “Ya know Jimmy, I was never a terribly impressive man in my 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s, but NOW I can reach for the package of Jello on the HIGH shelf.”  Rest assured, as you enjoy that last laugh for your last few years on the earth, I had enjoyed my first laugh for decades.

Rest assured, I can laugh at the same thing for a LONG time

Because, fundamentally, I’m laughing at those of you waiting to laugh last, because you’re missing out on the true comedy: you aren’t at peace with your mortality.  You’re so absolutely terrified of a future where you’re old, crippled, decrepit, feeble and unable that you desperately cling to anything within your power to prevent it, ONLY to make yourself all of those things when you are in your youth!  In order to not be weak when you are old, you choose to be weak when you are young.  THAT is something worth laughing about.  Life can either be a comedy or a tragedy: it all depends on when you’re willing to open yourself up to laughter.  The people waiting to laugh last decided to die first, but if you pursue the first laugh, you’ll be laughing a LOT.