Humor is one of life's great antidotes

I turned a corner and there it was: a face of eyes, nose, mouth, and bark with painted eyelashes and a mustache, all nestled in a wonderfully manicured spherical bush. It’s a work of art, un chef d’oeuvre, blessing a street corner in Mile End with a wholesome invitation not to take life so seriously.

Some place inside me shouted with childlike delight the first time I saw it. The stewards of this home put their time, effort, and energy into giving life to this display. What a gift!

It got me thinking about humor: one of life’s great antidotes. When stress bears its weight down, humor is there to lighten the load and give us the lift we need to get back on our feet.

Back in high school, I once hit my head on the top of the car as I was getting out. Pissed off that I hit my head, I slammed the car door shut.

Then a deep sting of pain—I didn’t notice my left thumb hanging over the doorframe. One unaware moment led to a broken thumb and a heavy wave of frustration.

As I recovered with a cast on my wrist, day by day, week by week, the story of the incident began to infuse with humor. Now, cushioned by nearly two decades, it’s a funny tale for me to tell and a valuable lesson learned by experience about the futility of unchecked anger.

The humor was invisible at first; the frustration was too much.

But with more space came more clarity, and with clarity, humor began to poke its head through the bushes. Sometimes life is so absurd that the only thing you can do is laugh. Humor cuts through tension and often blooms out of absurdity, even despair.

Ram Dass (and many others of his ilk) used to talk about the cosmic humor of it all. An idea dubbed The Cosmic Joke has permeated counterculture for some time; the idea that the universe is inherently humorous.

“The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there—so there the mountain stays.”
— Ram Dass

Nature is riddled with humorous creatures and happenings. To take just one example: the dung beetle survives on other creatures’ poop. It finds a piece of dung on the savannah and is happy as a clam. Some dung beetles (the “rollers”) roll the dung until it makes a nice, round ball. Males usually roll, and that attracts a female who walks along for the journey. Then they bury it together, hold hands underground, and make babies on top of their ball of dung for their children to feed on too.

Children’s books are filled with dogs, cats, wolves, bears, and fish. I think it’s time the dung beetle’s story finds its way onto tiny bookshelves.

When I think back on my left thumb (which never regained its full range of motion), that’s cosmic humor at play. Oh, you think slamming the door is going to soothe your anger? Think again!

On a busy day full of rigamarole, coming across this tree stump face sent a shockwave through my system. It jolted me back to presence with a smile and presented a fresh doorway for me to walk through.

When life feels overwhelming, challenging, or confusing, a sense of humor can give us the extra time we need to feel into the truth of things, bumble around, and find our way through. I must be able to hold things lightly and laugh at myself sometimes. It’s a pressure-release valve, a balm, a block of ice melting.

Taking life too seriously strips us of the potential to engage with the inherent humor in it, closing us off from the myriad possibilities offered to us in any moment.

Humor is an invitation to make sense of reality from different angles; a method for piecing together frayed ends of experience into a sort of coherence. Developing a sense of humor means cultivating the skill of seeing some of those hidden connections.

Plus, if fun, play, and levity aren’t welcome in our endeavors, then it all becomes a drag.

Staying connected to the humor in it all opens me up to life’s unpredictability and surprise—the hearty spice of novelty that I crave. When things don’t go according to plan, humor comes in to laugh it off, stay open, and continue onward.

Life is abundant with possibility. Pause at any moment and look around, take in your surroundings with your senses. Get down with your nose in the grass and witness the wonder. We humans get so fixated on our ideas, beliefs, and ways of relating to the world. It’s too easy to miss the beauty, humor, and the living magic of synchronicity.

Humor is a wise old elder, always ready to share a laugh and walk us home.