Has anyone ever given you that advice? I got it long ago, from a source not exactly known for counsel of that sort: a Catholic nun. (A Dominican, at that. Ask your nearest Catholic-educated acquaintance why that makes it special.) She felt that I was excessively serious, and therefore not getting the best out of my young life. So she advised me to become entertaining to others.
Her reasoning was simple: if you entertain others, they’ll entertain you. You’ll smile. You might even laugh and come up with something funnier. And everyone around you will relax and consider you “one of us.”
The excessively serious have a hard time in society. Regardless of the realities, those around them see them as “bring-downs.” Invisible barriers form to exclude such persons, unless they’re unusually useful. And who among us is useful enough to countervail that?
I took that good nun’s advice somewhat irregularly, as most six-year-olds would. But over the years, events have confirmed her wisdom. Now and then it comes back to me in its original form: a tall, habited Dominican nun girdled with a rosary and armed with a Bolo paddle.
“Try to be funny.” How does it sound to you? Trivial or salubrious?
Persons of high intellect should put special effort into being funny. High intellect is as much a burden as an asset. We think about things, usually too seriously and sometimes monomaniacally. He who concentrates on great problems and involute conundrums can develop a grim aspect that renders him forbidding to others. Undesirable, to say the least.
Yet the syndrome can be as invisible to the sufferer as water to a fish. He can plumb deep mysteries of all sorts and concoct brilliant theories about them, yet never become aware of his own shortcomings. The somber face that stares back at him from the mirror might as well belong to someone else. Any of his buddies, assuming he has some, at any time could tell him to “lighten up.” Whether he’ll hear it is another question. Some never do.
I’ve expressed my admiration for Haretina Kukuri several times here. She’s young, brilliant, possessed of enormous determination to understand the great problems of our time, and penetrating in her analyses of all such things. I believe her insights to be critically important to the future of the First World. I hope her audience continues to grow.
So it was with a special delight that I discovered that she’s also funny. (You have to have a degree of familiarity with both hip-hop and video-gaming culture to get full value for that quip, but these days that’s fairly common.) People not only enjoy humor and those who provide it; they also derive special impact from it. For humor, even when delivered offhand or indirectly, is a powerful assistant to memory.
The late Cyril Northcote Parkinson, himself a man of great penetration, was aware of this. He strove to be entertaining in all his emissions. For my tastes, he succeeded brilliantly. Toward the end of his “public” career, he said so explicitly:
Any effective announcement or message conveys a sense of personality. While precise and terse, it goes beyond precision and brevity. It comes from a known character, not from a faceless management. It never includes long words and involved constructions. Short words are best, each one a hammer blow and not a handful of cotton wool. Last of all, it often includes a touch of humor. This serves more than one purpose. It makes the message human. It attracts attention. Above all, it assists memory. And the secret of humor, employed as a deliberate tool or device, is to tie in the joke with the message that remembering one means remembering both.[From Parkinson’s essay “Law of the Vacuum.”]
The truly inspiring and effective leaders of history have all been funny. Say what you will about Abraham Lincoln, he was the funniest man ever to rise high in public office. It seemed to come naturally to him. Given what we know about the tragedy of his life and work, it may have been what sustained him. Have a sample:
Once [Lincoln] was looking out the window of his law office in Springfield, Illinois, and saw a stately matron, wearing a many-plumed hat, picking her way gingerly across the muddy street. Suddenly she slipped and fell.
“Reminds me of a duck,” said Lincoln.
“Why is that,” asked a friend.
“Feathers on her head and down on her behind,” said Lincoln.
[…]
A dozen or more leading Wilmington businessmen called on Lincoln one day. They told him they represented the “weighty men of Delaware” and had come to discuss ways and means of winning the war. After the chairman of the delegation had finished his little speech, Lincoln asked, “So you are the weighty men of Delaware? All from New Castle County?” “Yes, all from the same city.” “Well,” said Lincoln mischievously, “did it ever occur to you gentlemen that there was danger of your little state tipping up during your absence?”[From Paul Boller’s Presidential Anecdotes.]
I could go on in this vein, but I think the point has been made:
Be Funny!
Cultivate a sense for the absurd. Observe and remember the contradictions and inconsistencies that abound among men, for these are the wellspring of humor. Don’t wear a grim face when out and about. Make others laugh, or groan. And remember this: if your taste runs to the pratfall, make yourself the object of it. People will happily laugh with you, as long as you aren’t laughing at them.
Laugh! And the world laughs with you.
Weep… and you weep alone.
For this sad old Earth
Must borrow its mirth
But has troubles enough of its own.
May God bless and keep you all.
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