I remember well looking at the black and white television watching Thor Heyerdahl and his team crossing some part of the pacific in a reed raft to prove that people could have sailed the Ocean to populate the Polynesian Islands. It was a practical demonstration as his first raft sank, proving that only some of those who started, finished the journey.
Of course that is true of all journeys and all peoples and some journeys are far more hazardous than others although I doubt very much if Hannibal had the wit to name his lead elephant ‘Rome or Bust’, it is humour that so often gets us through because laughter releases endorphines that make us feel better, and how we feel determines how we react to experiences.
Though I think the humour belongs to those undergoing the journey and not to those who comment upon it later, comedians find great laughter in other people’s hardships and even in the tragedies that are the created by human foibles such as Scott dying in the Antarctic because of his insistence on using machines.
But we are all on journeys, all experiencing the world through our own minds, all looking for landfall so we can get off our precarious rafts but in life there is no landfall. So I wish you all lots of laughter, plenty of fair weather and the hope that whatever you do this year none of you end up being the protagonists on a Discovery Chanel special.