No Laughing Matter?

Seriouslyourself

Hi there, come on in. This is Seriously Yourself, the podcast and I'm Ingrid Helander.
Hello, Hi, come on in. I was just thinking about things that make me laugh and I was thinking about it because last month in June in the seriously yourself community, we were talking about humor. And humor and laughter tend to be thought of as maybe trivial or unimportant or things that are saved for when all the tough stuff is out of the way. And I'm here to tell you this absolutely not true.
In fact, I would imagine that people who have been through crisis and difficulty and you know, really scary survival kinds of things in those moments, if it goes on very long, find amazing refuge in humor, right? In laughter in the ability to get a kick out of anything at all.
And so you know, we know that laughter makes for healthy people and yet we tend to ignore the absolute respect that laughter and humor deserve and I was trying to think of a joke to tell you and I'll be darned if I can think of one and I'm not going to remember them, I like them. Only joke I could think of is when, when is a door? Not a door, You know this one when it's a jar. Yeah, so there's that, but what do you find humorous? What makes you laugh and when and why? You know, we asked that in our group and we got a lot of interesting answers, you know, people love to hear people that are, they find sort of the humor and irony and everyday situations. Some group members absolutely cannot stop laughing at these like fail videos where people are falling and tumbling off of bicycles and plopping over on segways and right? You know those, they don't actually die or nothing terrible happens, but it just looks so darn funny when, when they're falling. And I think it's probably because we know that feeling right of tripping and falling and parts of us do want to sort of giggle and laugh about it and that's good for us, right? So good for you to laugh. It lowers your stress levels and your blood pressure and it connects you to other people, right? And it helps you to breathe more deeply in a really great way.
I was thinking about, oh my kid, I think it was the very youngest. When we were traveling, we had like a 24 hour ride from the northeast down to Florida and he had taken up this little thing he would do, where he did this forced laugh, and it was so annoying. It was like "ha ha ha ha", and he would do it and do it and do it. And at first to be like knock it off and then he did a little more, you know, without being offended and we'd be like, stop it. Really, no kidding, stop it, we're in a car together, please stop. And he would do it some more and some more and some more until finally you couldn't not laugh. You couldn't, there was just no way. And once we all got going right, then his laugh would become more like a real laugh because he was sharing it with us and receiving it back and then we would be just crying and snorting and howling altogether. It was so hilarious to us and it started out being so annoying, right? Just irritating. Like a, like a fly, a bee buzzing in your ear.
So what do you find humorous and why does it matter? Well, what would you be if you had no humor? The ability to look at ourselves with humor. It's the same route as humility. I think we can see our life in a greater perspective. We can gain ease, we can find joy. We can delight. One of the women in our group said this amazing thing and I love it so much and she said, you know, I think if when my kids are bugging me, if I can step back for just a second and I can find the humor in what they're saying, not in, you know, a day or two or a week or a month or a year, but now if I can get enough space to find humor in this thing they've done or this space there in. I think I would be a far more calm and patient parent. I think she's right. I think she's right on, if we can find a little bit of genuine humor, good humor, a sense of humor about our circumstances, about others around us. About the things that feel absurd to us or about things that we feel like we need to mm fix right? Lots of times with our Children. It's like, well if I laugh, they're going to take this to the endth degree.
I think that's why I love the example of my kids so much because the truth is he was gonna do that till we laughed. He's going to keep trying that until it is successful, right? So by ignoring it, we were prolonging what was agony to us and by joining it, it stopped. We all got a good laugh. We were all done satisfied snotty and tearful and happy as can be. Right. So when something in part of you pulls your natural humor, your natural sense of this is goodness. Then you should share that if possible, right? Even if you have to change a rule or or change a system or pick up a mess later. If you can find that space, that moment of oh, this is really kind of charmingly funny. It's gonna help you.
You know how about a fender bender? What if there was something funny about it? I remember my Dad asked if he could drive a brand new minivan. I had gotten, this was back in the 90s and I was like sure of course you can. And we drove to the mall and he was appreciating it and I was feeling kind of pumped that my dad liked my nice new car and he backed into the parking place and there was a light post and unbeknownst to us, the lower portion of the light post was probably a cement or like a steel holder, right? And it stuck out from the post itself, but he couldn't see that they didn't have those nice backup cameras then and I think it's got his name on it. The backup camera actually now it was discovered maybe for him. No, it wasn't. But so he backed up and I hear this and man my brand new, I mean I had driven it three times brand new car and it was perfectly clear that when we were going to step out of this van, there was gonna be a big gash in the back and my heart just kind of sank and my dad was like horrified. Of course, you know, he just felt terrible instantly. And for some wonderful circumstance, this sense of like humor came over me like welp, there you go, what can you do, what can you do? It was just a pure accident. It was just a tiny error. It was just, oh well, we got a big dent here. And you know, I knew I probably wouldn't be able to get that fixed because I didn't have extra money to get things like that fixed and insurance wasn't gonna cover stupidity. Oh, that was a stupid way to have a pole there and it's stupid. There's no cameras and that was a stupid move. No, it didn't matter. So it was just one of those things that was gonna be and I was like, oh dad, it's fine. It was either gonna be you or me, You know, it was gonna happen. I've never owned a car that didn't at least have a ding or dent or you know, sometimes my fault, sometimes someone in the parking lot doesn't matter. And the sense of just peace and funniness and positive came over me and it was like, yeah, oh well. Oh, crap. Oh, funny.
Yeah, that's what I mean. It makes space for us when we appreciate a sense of humor, when you have a sense of humor about yourself, when you have a sense of humor about those you love. And even when you have a sense of humor about those you don't like and probably especially. That's so essential right now. And humor doesn't mean we make excuses for people. And humor doesn't mean that we ignore things, humor just means we come at things from a place of, you know, we're all human and this is a pretty funny circumstance we're in, yeah?
So hey, it's summer. Summer is supposed to be fun. Go out and find yourself some humor and the first place to look is right inside you, go right to your heart, go right to your belly and indulge yourself a little bit. What's funny? Let yourself see it, love it, and appreciate it and just watch it's contagious, you know. See you soon. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Seriouslyourself. To help treat yourself well each week, go ahead and subscribe to Seriouslyourself wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this link with anyone you love who might be seeking a little more truth and delight in their lives.

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And thanks to those who make Seriouslyourself special: our wonderful music is Midsummer from the album Flood by the fabulous Joel Helander. Seriouslyourself is produced by Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, Executive Producer. The ideas and inspirations come from beautiful humans like you, that I feel lucky to know. And I'm Ingrid Helander. Take good care of yourself. See you next time.