Comedy clubs prosper all over the country but their profits soar during tough economic times. Norman Cousins wrote a book about how he overcame Cancer by watching movies that made him laugh. Gallows humor is legendary for dealing with awful situations and most of us can recall how we dealt with the horrific effects of 9/11 by daring to laugh again.
It could be such that we humans take ourselves and our lives too seriously. It may be that we are so fixed on the issues of the day and those issues are so painful and exhausting and routine that we are unable to see beyond our pain so as to reframe things to reveal any humor.
Take, for example, the family who renovated their home. The mess, the dust, the unhooked plumbing“all of it made for a seriously stressful situation for everyone concerned. They all dealt with it by coining a phrase that became an inside joke: All ya gotta DO is Fifty years after the fact, if someone in that family says All ya gotta DO is everyone bursts into uproarious laughter. Their misery bonded them and the humor freed them. It was pure magic!
If you find yourself in an untenable situation and you find a way to reframe it, you create a way of freeing yourself from trouble, embarrassment, and anxiety. Many times we can find ways to laugh at ourselves and release some stress. It was highly stressful when we rearranged our lives in order to attend the wedding of a relative. We had to reschedule our work, make sure we had a gift that would please the bride and groom; and that we were appropriately attired. You can imagine our consternation when we realized that we had gone to the wedding on the wrong day! What was there to do but laugh at ourselves? Here we were, all dressed up and no place to go! It still makes us giggle, just to think of it. Never mind that we were not amused at the time.
I know a couple who planned a honeymoon trip following their wedding. The ceremony was perfection, the dinner that followed was festive, and even though the weather had become chilly and wet, they set off on their journey, full of hope and promise. It was not until they had been on the road for an hour that the bride discovered-to her horror-that the airline tickets were not with them! What could have been a disastrous beginning for a newly married couple became a great source of laughter for many years hence because this couple took the matter in stride, made other arrangements to collect the tickets and had a really good laugh. Now, theres a prescription for a happy marriage!
Sometimes you can take a cue from someone with special needs. They seem to find ways to put other people at ease when situations become stressful. There is a group home where two men share an apartment. Their caretaker told this story: I needed a packing list so when the guys visit their family I know what to put into their suitcases. I had been provided with one but it was misplaced. When I asked for a new list, the mother of one of the guys sent TWO of them! One was for the things we should send; the other list gave us what NOT to send and both were done in the style of David Lettermans Top Ten! We howled with laughter over both lists! She did not seem frustrated with the need for another list; she made sure we remembered these lists by injecting some humor into the situation. It has been said that dog is mans best friend. That might very well be, but humor rates right up there! You really ought to practice humor more often. It might be contagious!