Laugh away

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Life has become horrible. There is interminable war on in the Middle East, and terrorists are everywhere. On one hand, malnourished people are dying, and on the other, obesity is killing us. Everywhere you look, you see land disputes, property disputes, water disputes, scams and problems. If all these are not enough to cast a blight on life, public holidays fall on Sundays and police presence is preventing bandh holidays. What is this world coming to? Sigh! There is nothing to smile about, is there?

Well, I beg to disagree. For starters, have you looked in the mirror lately? You have? Then you know that there is one person who can always make you laugh — Yourself! Yes, when you are able to laugh at yourself, you are never without a joke.
“How is it that you’ve put on weight? You are a vegetarian,” said someone to me. I replied, “Yes, and so are elephants and whales.” The other person couldn’t help laughing through their apologies. If I took myself too seriously, that remark would have ruined my day. As it worked out, my day was made — I felt better about myself.

Humour is very important because it lightens the load of life and makes it worthwhile. Life is not a competition, and there are no winners or prizes given at the end of it. There is no point in taking life too seriously because, as someone once pointed it out, we’re not going to get out of it alive. All those things we are worried over now won’t matter a matchstick when we are dead. Charlie Chaplin described it perfectly when he said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”

And one of the best kinds of humour is self-deprecating humour, where you poke fun at yourself.  While laughing at someone is the worst sort of humiliation a person can inflict on another, self-mockery takes the sting out of words by aiming it at yourself instead. To be honest, laughing at yourself isn’t something new; others are doing it anyway.

When you laugh at yourself, you offend no one. You may even pre-empt nasty personal comments by others about you. One Multiple Sclerosis patient made light of the uncontrollable movements caused by the disease, remarking, “One good thing about Multiple Sclerosis is I don’t have to worry about stirring my coffee anymore.”
Self-deprecating humour is not hurtful or belittling, as it is not aimed outward. As Mary Hirsch says, it is like a rubber sword, making a point without drawing blood. It invites people to laugh with you, and not at you. “Some people are saying that the reason Michael Phelps wasn’t doing so well for a while was because he let himself get too out of shape,” quipped Conan O’Brien. “I just have to say that I have been watching the Olympics, and if that guy is out of shape, I have been dead for five years.”

“They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian,” said Bob Monkhouse, an English entertainer, “Well, they are not laughing now!” The nuances in this comment makes one think, and that is what this kind of humour does. It gets people’s attention, making them listen even as they laugh, and pulls them closer with a common bond. A message emblazoned on the T-shirt of a pot-bellied man reads ‘Six-pack coming soon’, and you find yourself chuckling as well as commiserating with him.

Making a joke about your own situation makes life more bearable by lessening negativity and diffusing tension. When astronaut John Glenn was strapped into his seat in the spacecraft in the highly-stressful minutes before take-off, he joked, “Oh my god, I’m sitting on a pile of stuff created by the lowest bidder.”

Laughing about oneself also makes a person sound more human and equalises the situation. George W Bush, in his commencement speech at Yale, remarked slyly, “Most important, congratulations to the class of 2001. To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students — I say, you, too, can be the president of the United States.” Another president too had no illusions about himself. When an opponent called him two-faced, Abraham Lincoln responded, “If I were two-faced... would I be wearing this one?”

Similarly, wildly successful horror author Stephen King has no illusions about his place in the world of literature when he says, “I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries.”

Life has two sides to it, and when you flip over the tragedy-heartaches-and-disappointments side, it can show its lighter perspective. Author David Sedaris said it best: “At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.”

However, self-mockery or self-deprecation has its dark side. You may be aware of your strengths as well as your weaknesses, but all the others will see are your weaknesses. Sometimes people take your jokes about your own incompetence seriously and get a completely bad opinion of you.

Once, when I was with a group of friends, I made a small joke about how I wasn’t a good cook, expecting to be contradicted by a friend who liked my cooking. To my utter shock, she agreed with what I said, and I ended up feeling hurt. That was when I realised that while self-deprecating humour is good in small doses, it may end in self-sabotage when used in large chunks, or all the time.

Just being ironic...
At times, however, you have had enough of laughing at yourself. Now what do you do for a laugh? Well, it’s simple. You laugh at others. Yes, you make a play with words, a sarcastic remark, a caustic rejoinder like this: “I’m sorry I hurt you when I said you were stupid. But I thought you already knew.”

Sarcasm is defined as ‘The use of irony to mock or convey contempt.’ As for irony, it is when statements convey the exact opposite of their literal meaning. Basically, it is sarcasm that is defanged and declawed, and can still bring a smile to your face. For example, when you name a huge dog ‘Tiny’, it is ironic. So by commenting on how pleasant the weather is, when it’s actually pouring felines and canines, you can bring some cheer into the otherwise miserable day.

Yes, irony may make you smile, but sarcasm can be downright hilarious. When told by the right people, in the right situations, and with the right tone of voice, sarcastic remarks are super-funny. Groucho Marx once remarked to somebody, “I never forget a face. But for you, I’m prepared to make an exception.” Oscar Wilde quipped, “Some people make people happier wherever they go, some whenever they go.” When Lady Astor waspishly said to Winston Churchill, “If I was your wife, sir, I would poison your coffee,” Winston Churchill immediately replied, “If I was your husband, I would drink it.”

Sarcasm is a sign of creative thinking and encourages listeners to think also. When the boy says, “I have a pen, you have a phone number. Think of the possibilities,” the girl replies, “I have a sandal, you have a face. Think of the casualties.” Yes, it hurts for the moment, but it has to be said. Like when a doctor says, “It’s not that diabetes, heart disease and obesity run in your family. It’s that no one runs in your family.”

Sometimes, sarcasm is the only thing that really hits the nail on the head. ‘This is the Mondayest Monday that ever Mondayed’ describes a terrible Monday perfectly. ‘My life feels like a test I didn’t study for’ is apt when you can do nothing right. ‘If you can smile when things go wrong, then you have someone in mind to blame’ sounds terrible, but is true.

However, when someone said, “I feel so miserable without you. It’s almost like having you here,” it stings. And when you laugh at somebody, you make an enemy of that person. Charles Pierce must have made an enemy for life when he made the remark, “If you ever become a mother, can I have one of your puppies?” Mark Twain must have made many when he commented, “I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.” And TV entertainer Johnny Carson must have antagonised an entire government department when he said, “Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.”

Sarcasm at its best
You may repeat Quentin Crisp’s quote, “The trouble with children is that they are not returnable,” and a person who is a parent would agree with you wryly. But when you repeat this anonymous quote, “Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence”, or “You have an inferiority complex: and it’s fully justified”, you better not expect a benign response. For, sarcastic comments can hurt like hell. They can be aggressive or downright mean.

The problem with sarcastic comments is that they have to be said just so, otherwise they lose their effectiveness. Quite often, they don’t do well on repetition: you just have to be there. Also, use too much sarcasm and you will come off not as smart and witty, but bitter, frustrated, angry, insecure and unkind. No wonder it is called the lowest form of wit.

And then there are paronomasias, or puns to be simple. Puns are plays on words when there are two or more meanings. As long as none of the meanings are off-colour, in which case they become double-entendres, to pun is to have clean fun. In fact, Alfred Hitchcock even called puns the highest form of literature.
And any of us can make pun of anything, anytime. A sign at a music shop says, “Gone Chopin. Bach in a minuet”. One DNA says to another, “Do these genes make me look fat?” When they draw your blood in a testing lab, it is to give you a bloody picture.

Talk about anything, there are puns about it. Ego: When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I. Time: When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds. Medicine: A pessimist’s blood type is always b-negative. Academics: Without geometry, life is pointless. Democracy: In democracy, your vote counts. In feudalism, your count votes. Even war: War does not determine who’s right — only who is left.

And there are some puns that need no reason to exist other than the fact that they are funny: ‘Man who makes mistakes on an elevator is wrong on many levels.’ ‘A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two-tired.’ ‘The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.’ ‘A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to the hospital. When asked about his condition a little later, the nurse said, “No change yet.”

So, now I hope you can see that there are plenty of ways in which to laugh. Robert Frost was darn right when he said, “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.” In a world that looks like it’s going insane, the only thing we can do is laugh or cry. Let’s choose to laugh, for it beats crying, any day.

Here’s one more reason to laugh: A man is talking to God. “God, how long is a million years?” God answers, “To me, it’s about a minute.” “God, how much is a million dollars?” “To me, it is a penny.” “God, may I have a penny?” “Wait a minute...”