Comedians have a way of taking sensitive topics like racism, sexism, and politics and bringing them to light in a way that is non-confrontative because it has the ability to make you laugh. You laugh about it because of how fucked up it is. You laugh because of how obviously horrible something is (and how it somehow exists nonetheless). Comedy is story telling with an edge of absurdity, and the admittance that life is full of it.
When I was a teenager, one of my favorite shows on MTV was The Roast. I loved the concept of it, a celebrity who has PR people working fanatically to make them look good, then gets on stage to sit down and get willingly castrated by comedians. The comedians are merciless with their jokes about the celebrity, everything is on the table from their looks to their dating life and career mess ups.
The celebrities who handle the roasting the best are the ones who are able to laugh at themselves. They are able to see the semi truths in the jokes the comedians make about them. They don't take themselves so seriously. The celebrities that suffer most are the ones with the inflated egos. Their discomfort is palpable when the celebrity wants to defend themselves. It's usually when the joke has struck some psychic chord. If you can laugh at yourself, you can live with yourself.
It takes a sophisticated intelligence to be able to handle paradox, the conflicting needs of the self, and the constant contradictions that play out in all our lives. The things we really want versus what we think we should want. Who we want to be versus who we are right now. What we think versus what we say. Humor is a form of grace, because it is an admittance to the fucked-upery of ourselves. Humor simplifies the complex.
Sometimes all we can do is laugh to keep from crying, and when that laughter is real, not forced or coerced or a way to bypass an emotion, it feels beautiful. This laugh acts as a small bow to the universe. I don’t have the words for the broadness of feeling, so I laugh. I know that life is ridiculous and I will never understand it, so I laugh. I am aware of my own foolery and shortcomings, so I laugh. Laughter is a form of gentleness with oneself. It is a lightness of being.
Novelist Anne Lamott once said, “Laughter is carbonated holiness.” This rings true. It is that bubbly light vapor that rises above the Earthly heaviness. When we can laugh at our own pain, after we have cried over it, it is healing. That laughter is a part of the process in moving onward.
From all the times I have felt most broken, crying on the bathroom floor, and all the tears have fallen there is a sense of clarity. Everything feels lucid and sharp and soft at the same time. I feel the grief leave, and then the laugh comes.
The manic laughter that comes at 3 am after crying alone on the floor. It is not a laugh of defeat, but of humility, claiming: yes there are some things I need to work on.
I laugh because I am alive and I am here, and I can try again.
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