Seriously, it is funny
I laugh at a lot of things. My friends. My job. My bosses, past and future. My bank manager (I hope he doesn’t read this) advertising people, this topsy turvy world of ours and life as it happens to us when we are making other plans.
But, most of all, I laugh at myself. There is so much to laugh about. My bank account. The hug chasm between my expectations and reality. The banana skins that have conspired to strew themselves in my path.
But things were kind of spoilt for me the other day when I was doing my usual little let down old Vohra routine and someone said, you know, you shouldn’t do that, you keep making fun of yourself and no one will take you seriously.
That’s much the point, I said bravely, too many of us take ourselves too seriously, my goodness, man, we even take our designations seriously, look around you, it is pure comedy.
He nodded in a sad sort of way and said, you discount yourself, sell yourself short, you think people are laughing with you when you joke about yourself, they feel sorry for you.
That’s okay, I say, some days I feel sorry for me.
There, see, he said, you are doing it again, you know you could have been a big success if only you didn’t always let yourself down.
You mean if I didn’t laugh about the state of my bank account, I said.
Yes, he said, you hurt yourself belittling yourself.
How do you explain to people like this that the crisis in confidence is on their side. That by making yourself the butt of your humor you actually inflate your confidence and end up feeling good about yourself. Like so many more of us did not so long ago when we weren’t so divisive and sensitive and seeking slight like we do now. We could laugh at ourselves and our institutions and set them up to funny mirrors and take a joke and feel that wonderful warmth seeping through us as we kidded about.
But now there is so much bitterness and ignorance and most of us are ready to be insulted at the slightest hint of a remark that we believe is aimed at us. On an especially bad day we can even declare war.
Take this gentleman and his good intentions. He actually means well when he advises me to stop with the self-persecution. He wants me to take myself seriously so other people can take me seriously. According to his theory (hugely popular these days) he believes the world will be a happier place if we all took ourselves seriously and paraded about all smug and pompous and full of ourselves.
I beg to differ. I think we are already dangerously close to being thin skinned and paranoid and thoroughly dislikeable. Our laughter has become self conscious and our foibles and our foolishness that were so delightfully exposed over the centuries now become an armor and we spend all our energies getting even when all we have to do is go stand in front of the mirror and look at ourselves till the laughter comes in uncontrollable gusts. I have my own theory. Care to hear it. Competent people joke about their abilities. Incompetent people hide behind seriousness.
Expat societies by virtue of their fragile nature are even worse than the norm. All about us we see silly people playing ‘dress up’ so full of their little symbols of success and so solemn about themselves as if a little happy self deprecation would crack their carefully preserved shells. Their wealth, their car, their address, their watches, most of all their rubber band designations stretched to total absurdity, hiding behind fancy titles like a knight in less than shining armor.
Well, I am sorry, I think laughter is a fun thing and I think some of the things I do are hilarious and some of the things that happen to me are funny haha and funny peculiar and it makes me feel so good about myself that not only am I imperfect but the flaws are capable of being set to humor, the sharper the better.
Whatever happened to us that we stopped laughing and began to take ourselves seriously.
