About Laughing At The Storm
Post 227:
There’s something inherently wrong with everything. When the numbers are in, the totality of the human experiment has left us with nothing but an implacable race toward doomsday. The world is coming to an end, and endings suck.
Oh wait. I was just reading the news. Pardon me, sometimes I let it get to me and I forget that the sun is most likely going to come up tomorrow. The bluster and the bombs of negativity seep into my marrow in moments that are at times fleeting and other times seemingly intractable.
It’s been said, this too shall pass. I don’t know who first said that, but he/she was right. Of course there are problems and quagmires that seemingly have no solutions, but on the whole, things work themselves out.
So chucking it all and steeping yourself in nihilism isn’t really a solution, and more than that, it’s boring.
Maybe it’s a genetic aberration, but my solution is to make fun of it all. And I don’t mean it’s cool to make fun of real tragedies and horrible situations—but it can be helpful. It could be that the world needs people who go to the mattresses and freak out about the next impending peril, but it also needs people who take a breath and make a joke.
A good starting place is to make fun of yourself. If you take a microscope to your own existence, all the crap you’ve pulled, it’s pretty absurd. And yet, you’re still here.
It works on the macro level, as well. Read a blog or the news and tell me that most of it isn’t absurd to some degree. But the train keeps rolling.
But what about the people that are actually in danger, be it at war or in some awful armpit of the planet, lives actually on the line?
They need a laugh too. Maybe more than anyone. It’s why the USO sends comedians overseas to carve out a moment of levity for the brave souls who spend so much of their time with mortality knocking on the door.
It says something about the human condition, that soldiers are able to put down their guns and crack up about some guy talking about how he’s too fat to get his socks on without a great amount of toil. I think it’s beautiful. Poking fun of everything is, ironically, one of the only things I take seriously. I’m a joke. A fleshly amalgamation of mistakes and trips and falls. Might as well laugh about it. It beats crying. Find something funny. Cut up. What used to get you in trouble in school is now totally okay. No teachers are going to send you to the principle’s office anymore, and if there are people in your life who denigrate your character and chasten you for taking life a little light, let it roll. Thank them. That’s just another person you can make fun of.
Okay. I’m gonna get back to being ridiculous. Let it roll, brothers and sisters. See you after.
