Honoring Your Sense of Humor

Laugh, because it hurts too much to cry

I learned on the playground that one way to disarm bullies is to laugh at them. Sure, it may get you punched in the face, but oftentimes it just confuses them and they'll walk away, shaking their heads and muttering that you're crazy and simply not worth their time.

On a trip overseas last summer (ah, I remember a time when normal people would leave their homes to - what's that word? oh yes! - vacation), the bully took the form of a surly middle-aged woman. She was sitting behind my husband and myself on a sight-seeing boat ride down a river in Copenhagen, when my husband suddenly sneezed loudly. He wasn't facing her and he sneezed into his elbow. She may have been startled or worried about her own health, but she began yelling at both of us how offended she was by his breach of etiquette and wouldn't stop berating us, no matter what we or anyone else said to her. Even her own husband couldn't get her to settle down. So, I just started laughing and she finally picked herself up in disgust, cursed a bit, and dragged her poor husband to the other end of the boat.

Dark humor is born of those times when we can't battle the bully or free ourselves from its tyranny and abuse. For millennia, people have turned to laughter to mitigate the pain. When you've already tried everything you can think of to remedy the situation or are just powerless to affect it, what else are you going to do? There's power in prayer, and faith and community uplift a lot of people. And so does humor.

Here's my take at combatting the biggest bully currently on the planet, the Coronavirus pandemic. It's a terrible illness that's costing us dearly in lives lost and wreaking tremendous havoc in our personal finances and livelihoods, with huge financial consequences for both our national and global economies. There's much to be upset about, but right now I choose to laugh in its face for my own sanity, if nothing else. These are some of my favorite memes from around the internet. Plus, a six minute original film that my teen daughter and I made during the first week of the quarantine, in response to a competition sponsored by our on-camera agency. (Our parody of the TV show "Survivor" took first place.) Enjoy!

And here's the link to our short film, Survivor: Coronavirus. The premise: mother and daughter are quarantined together for a LONG time. Can they survive each other? Click on the logo to find out.