Learning To Laugh
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There are numerous reasons why we laugh and use humor in our lives. This impulse goes way back to the prehistoric days (I have read). Since that was a few years before my time (but unfortunately not too many years before my time), I will have to take archaeologists word for this phenomena. I remember loving to laugh as a child. My mom was the “sense of humor proprietor” of our home, and making her laugh, was especially fun, as she was a tough audience. Especially when I was in trouble, which was a majority of the time.Humor principles are the same as they once were, in a nutshell, one person’s tragedy is another person’s comedy, aka slipping on a banana peel, still holds true to a certain degree. But audiences have gotten tougher, savvier, and more demanding, and rightfully they should. We live in a different world than our ancestors. We suddenly woke up in a world that was not quite as predictable as we were taught it would be in grade school. A day doesn’t go by that people don’t warn us, “We live in dangerous times, ya know.”
We have more anxiety, more worries, stranger happenings, our generation has experienced everything from Woodstock to Dolly The Sheep, when I say “our”, I mean the fringe side of the baby boomer generation. We are survivors to a certain degree. We have seen more wars than any generation before us. So we can laugh or cry. Or stay ambivalent. Laughing does not mean we are endorsing it. Humor is a way humans can cope under circumstances that seem to have spun out of control, which, frankly, today, happens in most of our lives now and again.
Tears are healthy. But to leave humor and laughter out of one’s life can make it bleak and miserable. People go to therapy. Just because one has a sense of humor about life, does not make them immune from psychological services. But you can be rest assured it can be a deterrent for many. After all laughter, like running or walking is therapeutic. We release endorphins when we laugh, walk or run. Some do it all, walking laughing and running, albeit not all at once.
In my early years as an adult, I worked in my father’s real estate business. It was a thriving business, but not a happy one. I was the youngest there, and I felt my duty was to produce laughter, as, it was what I had done as a child. It was a kind, but very uptight group of co-workers. As in so many in most professional sales jobs, though there may be some altruism involved, money, or the bottom line is the focus. Don’t get me wrong, I like money as much as the next guy. But I have keenly observed that, though there are plenty of very happy wealthy people, when people get into a business simply to make money, they end up highly disappointed. Hence I found myself surrounded by a lot of disappointed people who seemed to want to laugh, but could find nothing funny.
I gradually left the world of sales, and struck out on my own. I had read Disney’s biography, and how he launched his empire. I always enjoyed comic and gag humor, and continue to. I am not a great artist, so recruited a team of excellent illustrators and launched my own cartoon. That was a decade ago. I still love doing it. Not only do I get to (occasionally) give myself a chuckle, but sometimes others as well. Doing what you love, whether its making people laugh or not, will make you happier inside, and those around you seem happier. It seems the happier I am, the happier people around me become.
