The Laugh that Made the Woman Sad

So… you walk into a restaurant and 2 guys are sitting at a table and they are laughing their hearts out. You wonder – why they are laughing, what’s so funny…And then, one of them turns around,  points at you and they are both rolling on the floor – and all you can do is feel hurt and puzzled and worried that something’s terribly wrong with you, your hair, your face, your clothes or something totally ridiculous that you have done and you don’t even know it.

This is the opposite point of view, the anti-blog – the woman’s perspective on my Ollie and Stan post.

Every action creates some sort of a reaction – while our two beloved buffoons are the most sympathetic, seemingly benign characters, if you watch the short video carefully, you can see why the woman gets annoyed. She lashes out – isn’t an attack the fast antidote to being hurt and one alternative to self-defending?

And the chain reaction unfolds. And then Stan gets sad, and the woman… well… we don’t really know about the woman. But, the point is there are always multiple points of view and perspectives. The truth is never simple.

Like in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon in which a crime witnessed by four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways, facts, and perceptions, and feelings get in the way of our behaviors. And the least desirable outcome is mis-communication, hurt and misunderstanding.

So, it’s possible…just possible that Stan (or any Stan out there) was not out to get you in the first place. And it’s also quite probable that the woman (any woman in our life fable) did not intend to hurt you either.

Maybe – just maybe…