The spiritual significance of a sense of humour

I had a job interview this morning and it left my brain feeling depleted, as job interviews tend to. I spent all my concentration trying to say the right thing, and trying even harder not to say the wrong thing. I was feeling absolutely frazzled. I had promised myself that I’d write, so I mooched around my tiny room, flicking back and forth on the same 3 apps on my phone, I made 2 coffees, and eventually sat down to write. Except that I didn’t have a clue what to write about. Staring at my screen with a brain that felt fried by interview questions and caffeine, it occurred to me that now might be a good time to review my values (a much more productive use of my procrastination than watching Instagram reels). A bit of context:

For my 21st birthday, my mum gave me a Book of Values containing around 40 small pieces of paper. On each piece was written one word/value and corresponding definition. Some examples include:

• Gratitude: to be grateful for and appreciative of the positive aspects of myself and others

• Curiosity: to be curious, open-minded and interested; to explore and discover

• Sensuality: to create, explore and enjoy experiences that stimulate the five senses

• Fun: to seek, create and engage in fun-filled activities

• Creativity: to be creative or innovative

Author/researcher Brené Brown has a long list of values on her website which she suggests using for the same exercise. I find it helpful to have a little definition for each one to render them meaningful values as opposed to buzz words, but it can also be good for you to apply your own, favourite definitions. I recently heard a definition of ‘fun’ as the coincidence of 1) playfulness, 2) connection and 3) flow. I think this a much more robust definition than the one written above: “To engage in fun-filled activities”. I then start to reflect on what fun really means to me, and the role it plays in my life.

There are three pages in my Book of Values respectively titled “Very important”, “Important” and “Not So Important”, and lots of paperclips to arrange and rearrange my values accordingly. “Very Important” and “Not Important” need to have six values each. This is an exercise that helps me to explore which values are playing a central role in my life, which ones I might like to focus on more than I currently am, and which might have taken a backseat through the inevitable evolution of character and circumstance. All of the values have a place for different times and different people; there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to defining your own values.

I have come back to this book around six times over the last few years, normally during times when my life feels hectic and messy. As I was scanning through the values earlier today, I came across one which had previously been periodically swapped between the secondary “Important” page and the final “Not So Important” page. The word was Humour. My previous selves (the one setting off on her solo adventure to lands unknown, or the one about to start her tech job in the Big City, or one of the other Graces of my past) had placed little importance upon humour. Something was calling the current Grace to bump Humour up to the top six.

The definition given on the piece of paper (“the quality of being, or finding others, amusing or comic”) didn’t satisfy me. I looked up other definitions for Humour online, and found one that really seemed to summarise the feeling behind my wanting to promote it to the top of my list. Merriam-Webster defines humour as “that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous”. It is this very quality that has proven a genuine lifeline for me over the past few weeks.

I spoke in my last post about how I managed to find humour in a situation which at times felt terrifying and desperate in equal parts. It is not always possible to find the humour in a situation, or to remove yourself from your suffering enough to find it ludicrous. However, on my better days I have been able to separate myself from my precarious situation and look at my life from an impartial perspective, as just another life. I am a germ in the biosphere and (to use Merriam-Webster’s terminology) it is ludicrous to assume that my discomfort should matter at all. As humans we have the unique ability to remove ourselves from our suffering; to experience it as a bodily reaction to stressful stimuli as opposed to an existential threat from which there can be no return. It isn’t always possible to choose this option, but if we are able to find the humour in our misfortune we might be able to live a little bit more lightly.

A couple of weeks ago, I arranged for somebody to take the room I had been living in so that I could move to a cheaper sublet I had found elsewhere, which then fell through just a few days before I was due to move out. I had to put my things (a lot of things) into storage until I could find a new place to live, and I had nobody to help me move it all out. It took me 7 trips to take everything over, for which I used a trolley. I passed the same builders 14 times. They told me I was pushing the trolley wrong, and they seemed to find it funnier and funnier each time I passed. I laughed with them. Sometimes you’re the butt of the joke. Don’t take it personally. Sooner or later you’ll be the one laughing, but if you can: why not make it sooner rather than later?