A bad smile can hurt, but a good laugh is healthy, and even be salutary at times. « Accept suffering, but also accept joy when it takes you away from sadness and darkness. Know how to remain in the innocence of a child's laughter. »
« There is no reason to be serious in everything we do, since humor helps us to laugh at ourselves (or situations in which we dabble).
When you manage to laugh at yourself, and not at others, you approach the essential questions that allow you to remember to dare to love others, and therefore to have an open door to the goal to be achieved. »
(Testimony of a former humorist collected by Maddly Bamy, "To love without expecting in return")
« We insulted Rabbi Nachman, we humiliated him. We end up doubting his reason, thus realizing his deep wish.
Yes, he wanted people to look askance at him. This is why he often changed his identity, his disguise; he wanted to be different. Comedian, impostor, jester, rather than Rabbi.
He knew how to laugh, wanted to laugh, first of himself, and then of the rest. He played with the kids in the street to mock the Rebbe in him; he played war to ridicule wars. He posed like a madman to make fun of reason and appearances, like a nomad without baggage to underline the grotesqueness of possession.
He clowned around to get rid of the last traces of vanity that remained in him; at home he chose the other extreme: he disarmed his pride by pushing it to the limit; by exaggerating its own importance in all areas. By giving itself implausible dimensions, deliberately caricatural. »
