Humour's main virtue is that it injects a sense of levity, of lightness into our lives--it is heart-opening. It is all too easy in the midst of life's challenges to slip into pessimism, to take it all personally and forget that we have options, the most important of which is to suspend judgement for a moment so as to stem the tide of any potential free-fall into negative thinking when we are confronted with a challenging situation or problem.
Negative thinking, like positive thinking, can be predicated on misguided notions regarding the truth of any given situation, and so it is wise to suspend judgement for a time in order to create room for the whole picture to reveal itself.
Refining such habits can be helpful so, here are a few key things that go far toward putting a smile on my face:
Negative thinking, like positive thinking, can be predicated on misguided notions regarding the truth of any given situation, and so it is wise to suspend judgement for a time in order to create room for the whole picture to reveal itself.
Refining such habits can be helpful so, here are a few key things that go far toward putting a smile on my face:
Minimalism. For me personally, living a spare existence has gone far towards injecting a little levity into my life. I am not burdened taking care of things that don't add to the quality of my experience of being alive. The physical space around me is more vibrant--it breathes--and the possessions I do have add just the right touch of intimacy and warmth. This makes it much easier to attend to any mental and emotional dissonance that may come my way, thus rendering me lighter in spirit and more positive in outlook.
Take nothing personally. People are influenced and shaped by such a diverse number of factors, that nothing they say or do can possibly be reduced to something exclusively and personally related to the one individual they are directed at. The way people are raised, the societal influences, sub-culture influences and a whole host of other influences all convene to shape a person's thoughts, choices and actions, very little of which is related exclusively and inextricably to one sole individual. We are each responsible for the management of our own thoughts, choices and actions, so buyer beware! When I practice taking nothing personally a funny thing happens--compassion for both myself and others is engaged, allowing me to find humour in some of the things which used to cause me distress.
Cultivate a lighter touch. Being sincere in your interactions with others and yourself is dreadfully important, but being too serious is often problematic. When we are too serious our perceptions of a situation are often being run through a lens which is distorting what we are seeing. Some things, obviously, need to be taken seriously, but much of what we get excited and worked up about is the result of misguided expectations and the urge to control life in order to quell our fear and existential angst. This is ultimately a losing proposition. We need to learn to manage this angst with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. This requires wisdom and humour. The more deeply I am acquainted with the true nature of existence--its complexity and paradoxical elegant simplicity--the lighter my touch. We know very little about how all this works at the end of the day.
Reality is that we control very little in our lives and that we often make ourselves perfectly miserable in pursuit of ultimate security and safety. We are born, we live and we die. Nothing will change this. Nothing is wrong with this.
We need to demonstrate a degree of respect and reverence for this phenomenon and I believe to the degree that we do, the lightness and good humour natural to our being will make itself manifest.
We need to demonstrate a degree of respect and reverence for this phenomenon and I believe to the degree that we do, the lightness and good humour natural to our being will make itself manifest.
