If it isn't the Sound of Joyful Shouting...What Would You Call It?

Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.~GK Chesterton

Sorry to be over-quoting here , but CS Lewis spoke of pride as being the "unsmiling concentration upon self, which is the mark of hell."

Those words...unsmiling concentration upon self...have been lingering in my mind for days, now. Legalism and religion produce exactly this sort of unsmiling self absorption, and I've finally figured out that this is what bothers me about some people.

I have little fondness for those women who dread looking foolish or inappropriate, above all other kinds of dread. This is the gal who is perpetually aware of what she may look like to others. This pride is conscious of image. This sort of person isn't capable of even the moderate strength of "violence"...she is educated past her talent to be normal...too self aware to raise her voice to anyone, much less trounce them. None of that indecorous moderate strength for that sort of woman. Supreme strength? Forget the supreme strength of joy - it might manifest as a holy levity, and pride has no sense of humor.

If the proud ever do laugh, it is a second-hand emotion, not originating from their own heart, but rather it comes to them predigested. Pride is a consumer, not a producer, of humor.

I have done my share of laughing the last month or two, as certain realities about my world and myself have set in, and I make the choice to see things the way they really are. Some of the cackling is likely tinged in the barest sarcasm - which is indeed the lowest form of humor. 'Tis still humor. But most of my giggling is genuine, and medicinal, and in the company of a few dear friends. We guffaw. We have learned this past week, in the immortal words of my father: "No fools, no fun."

I have fun making a fool of myself. I'll become even more undignified than this! Others try to be all educated-dy and serious, self contained, smartened up, tense from reading dead guys, and they end up having their greatest fear come upon them - looking foolish. Not on purpose like me, mind you. Oh nonono. Never do they look foolish on purpose. Their antics are religiously intense, they know they are in a class by themselves.

::snort wheeze::

I do. I laugh at my own imaginative take on what life must be like to have "unsmiling concentration upon self."

Some say I laugh too loud. I say it is the sound of joyful shouting, heard in the tents of the righteous.

If a loud laugh isn't a sound of joyful shouting, you tell me...what would you call it?

Note - GK Chesterton is not permitted to reply to the question. We already know what he'd call it:

supreme strength.