Humor Helps Us Cope With Dizzying Change

My favorite survival skill is humor. I think of the flexibility that humor gives the mind as the best way to get past the absurdities of our current social and cultural environment.

Humor is so valuable because it teaches the mind to stay open, to flip from one perspective to another in an instant.

Our current rate of change is so rapid that if you cannot laugh at the chaos, you will not make it through.

My two favorite jokes are old chestnuts by now:

The one about the young man who was worried because his father was a contortionist and his mother was a clairvoyant and he could see his own end.

Or the dyslexic, agnostic insomniac who lay awake at night wondering if there really was a Dog.

These jokes of mine may offend contortionists, clairvoyants, dyslexics, agnostics, insomniacs or old chess nuts. What am I to do?

Along with all the other changes in our sensibilities, we are also learning new ways of laughing.

The best humor is that which reveals our own absurdities and lets us laugh at ourselves more than others. Maybe our increasing acceptance of once different “others” will turn the tide so we are always laughing at ourselves.

A world where humor is shared, not feared, would be wonderful.

Dear Dr. James: I have long been a fan of yours and have enjoyed your speeches and writings. However, I was so disappointed in you when you joked during opening remarks at a conference I attended.

You made a joke about property managers needing a Prozac booth along with all the other booths displaying services.

I am especially sensitive, as I am the mother of an adult daughter diagnosed with a mental illness. After years of struggle, my daughter is healthy and stable on a combination of medications. She handles the stresses and pressures of a job as a property manager, including insensitive remarks about “crazy people” and “Prozac booths.”

Coping with change includes being aware of the importance of recognizing that many people in your audiences may have mental illnesses that are managed successfully by medications.

- Pauline

Dear Pauline: I’ve thought about your letter for a long time and am ambivalent about how to answer it. We take ourselves so seriously that I am reluctant to give up humor unless it is harmful.

You write that it is, that you were hurt, so that is important to me.

I was thinking of a “Prozac booth” much like the services that we accept without controversy, such as insurance or special vitamin formulas for stress. When we can laugh at ourselves, our culture and our mental-health problems, they become less of a stigma.

There is a process by which a problem goes from hidden, to known and stigmatized, to known and accepted, to OK to joke about.

I may have jumped the gun. I do not know who in the audience laughed at the “joke” because they saw it as a put-down they agreed with or who laughed at it, as I had intended, as just the way life is and that it’s good we have Prozac when we need it.

Do we gauge our humor by those who are “especially sensitive” or by what most of us believe to be an acceptable poking of fun at our absurdities? I felt my “joke” indicated acceptance, not rejection, but because of your letter, I will not joke about Prozac again. Maybe in a few years it will be OK to laugh at more of our behaviors and medications, maybe not.

Thank you for your letter.

- Jennifer

Dear Readers: Two of the organizations I am working with for a better world are Mothers Against Violence in America, (800) 897-7697, and Childhaven, (206) 624-6477. I have written about MAVIA before, but when I recently visited the Eli Creekmore Branch of Childhaven, I was reminded again about its value. There are five branches of this program that every day pick up hundreds of at-risk children (1 month to 5 years of age) from their homes.

Childhaven provides clean clothes, three meals, play, therapy and a chance to spend the day in a loving, responsible world.

Childhaven provides classes and support for parents. It is the most basic and the most valuable program I know.

These children will grow into adults who will make our world a better place. Consider donating your time, money or goods to these organizations or ones like them.

In Spokane, the Hutton Settlement comes to mind.

Your help will make the world a safer place.

- Jennifer

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