Humor and Fun For a Fulfilled Life
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Gandhi 
The inner reflects the outer; the outer reflects the inner. What we learn from fulfilling Dreams in the outer world can be used for pursuing Dreams within ourselves.
After obtaining several material Dreams, you may wonder, “Where are these Dreams coming from?”
Important question.
Seeking the answer to that question may begin an important inner quest.
“Try not to become a man of success,” wrote Albert Einstein, “but rather try to become a man of value.”
Humor and Fun
“Life is short. Live it up.” – Nikit Khrushchev
Life is a game. Like all games, it’s only fun when we “take it all seriously” – when we get lost in the illusion, when it seems devastatingly real.
If some butinsky stood over us while we were playing Monopoly, reminding us, “That’s only paper; it’s not real money. That’s just plastic; those aren’t real hotels. It’s not a real jail they’re going to send you to; it’s just a square on a board,” we’d throw him out of the room.
We want to believe the illusion is real, or else it wouldn’t be any fun.
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It wouldn’t be any fun, either, if the competition weren’t very good and the score weren’t very close. Without challenges, life would be like playing tennis with a three-year-old. Lots of “victories,” but little fun. George Leonard explains:
“In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize the play.
The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt.
Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth.
We really wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh.” The Koran
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.” – W.H. Auden
As we’re playing this game of life, something occasionally reminds us not to take it all too seriously. “Enjoy yourself,” it says, “you’ll never get out of this alive.”
It’s called humor.
“Humor is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations,” explained Victor Borge. “There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.”
Alice-Leone Moats described Philadelphia society in this way: “The parties all reminded me of the Gay Nineties – all the men are gay and the women are in their nineties.”
Humor is truth, truth is humor.
Humor is probably most refreshing when we use it to look at ourselves.
“You grow up,” said Ethel Barrymore, “the day you have your first good laugh – at yourself.” Friederich Nietzsche wrote: “One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail in one’s life.” (What other book in the world would have Ethel Barrymore and Friederich Nietzsche agreeing on something in the same paragraph?)
When things are going awful, terrible, and horrible – it helps to remember that, in six months, you’ll be telling this “tragedy” as an anecdote. You’ll have your friends laughing hysterically about it. If it’ll be funny then, it’s funny now. By remembering that truth in the middle of the chaos, you can take a deep breath and say to yourself, “This is funny.”
“Humor is emotional chaos,” James Thurber explained, “remembered in emotional tranquility.”
“Humor is an affirmation of dignity,” said Romain Gary, “a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.”
Having trouble with your humor? Then request your Introductory Consultation today and get started in having fun with your life!
