What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

The line imagines a radical skepticism about human communication and emotional legibility: if the world is built on misunderstanding, then even the most basic social signals—like laughter—may conceal their opposite. Read in a Kierkegaardian key, it evokes the anxiety that accompanies self-consciousness and the gap between inwardness and outward expression. It also gestures toward the fragility of “the comic,” where what appears light or convivial may be a mask for despair. The question form matters: it is less a doctrine than a destabilizing thought experiment meant to unsettle complacent confidence in shared meanings and transparent feelings.