Thoughts on Humor (to Aid the Habitually Uptight)

Have you ever had a time in your life when you weren't entirely conscious of feeling intense amounts of stress until you realized you were having lots of unusual physical pain all of the time?  This happened to me this past spring.  As I finished up the obligations for the end of my first year at my new day job, I became aware of frequent headaches, neck tension, backaches, and exhaustion in general.  I knew the reasons for the pain were stress-related, as many changes in my personal and professional lives have taken place this year.  What I didn't know was how I might address it and bring things back to an equilibrium.  I assumed that finishing up my work obligations and going on vacation would help.  It did only slightly, as other obligations and stressors awaited me outside of work.

Meditation, Yoga, Laughter
In the past few weeks, the stress level has gone down considerably.  I credit this to several things:

1. I've had a consistent daily meditation practice since January, which is -- miracle of miracles -- one of my New Year's Resolutions that I've managed to maintain.  I use what I fondly refer to as the "Tara Brach is Busy" method of meditation: at the very least, no matter what is going on, I sit on the edge of my bed every night and bring my full presence and attention to three deep breaths.  Most days, I do more than this: 10-20 minutes of meditation is typical.  Keeping the commitment this small has kept the goal realistic and attainable, even on a few of the very busiest days I've had this year. (As an aside, if you aren't familiar with Tara Brach's work and enjoy meditation from a Buddhist perspective, please go check out her podcasts here).
2. This spring, as physical symptoms increased, I incorporated a regular yoga practice into my routine.  For this, too, I have a minimum: 5 sun salutations each day for a minimum of 5 days a week.  It helped with removing some of the physical tension and with practicing greater awareness and self-compassion.  I focus on a brief at-home practice using You Tube videos from Yoga with Adriene, so if this sounds interesting, I suggest taking a look here.
3. The third item that helped with stress -- humor, joviality, amusement, fun, delight, jocularity -- was something I discovered that I wasn't fully aware of needing to integrate further into my life.  In retrospect, it seems like biggest-duh-moment-of-my-life obvious.   

   

   How obvious?  THIS Obvious.
   (Photo credit: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_Obvious)

   
   

   
   

   
   

 What helped me to notice this was the process of observing some of the choices I was making and getting curious about why I was making them.  This is when I began noticing patterns.  I chose my yoga videos based on the amusing asides and references that the instructor incorporated into the instruction.  I noticed trying to do funny things to entertain my daughter, or comments I was making to my husband and how delighted he was -- and I was! -- when he laughed.  Also, toward the end of the school year, I made all-too-frequent jokes to anyone who would listen about how much more chocolate or coffee I would need to get through the end of the year.  Printed memes and funny pictures are posted near my desk at work.  As the school year wound down and I realized something needed a shift, I happened to come across an old guilty pleasure of mine, Whose Line Is It Anyway? a show I discovered is back on the air.  While I usually watch maybe five hours of television a month -- and that's a generous estimate, --  I proceeded to plunk myself down for about a week and watch as many episodes as I could cram around my daily obligations, bringing my hubby amusement (because of the uncharacteristic nature of it) and relief (because he realized that I realized that I still have a sense of humor).

Isn't THAT Funny?
Such adventures in humor have been leading me in interesting directions, bringing up questions and beliefs I didn't know I had. This time, the growth is happening in a more lighthearted manner, even as the questions I have are ones I'm asking from a genuine place. 

 I'm not sure where I picked up the idea that real, deep inquiry into the fundamental questions of existence is heavy and not at all a place of levity, but somehow I had.  This was a first little bit of learning (or relearning), the fact that life is just all struggle and hardship if you can't find something to laugh about.  Another bit of learning: if you're on a personal growth path or a spiritual path, there is really no excuse for not having a sense of humor.  It will keep you real, it will keep you relatable, and it will keep you sane.

As I became mindful of what I find funny, I noticed that I find many things amusing or humorous.  I also noticed that I had some self-judgment around what triggers my laughter.  I'm delighted by puns, plays on words, double entendre, clever turns of phrase, wit, and irony.  I'm also pretty fond of crude and sophomoric humor when it is delivered within an appropriate context and with good timing.  While these aren't the only forms of humor I enjoy, they are some of my favorites.   As a part of my coming to terms with humor, I've had to notice and accept those things that I find funny while realizing that others might be judging and rejecting of that, and also to acknowledge that there isn't really a consensus about why we're amused by some things and not others.  In any case, I've been able to use what I find funny as information to fuel my personal growth.

I also began to notice the grounding nature of humor.  Sometimes, I think that when people are big into personal growth work or spirituality, the personality can take charge of making sure you "appear" spiritual and that you're doing spirituality as a performance to other people, as a way to make yourself look "good" and "perfect."  This can be a trap.  I think that if we try to forgo our humanness in the name of spirituality, we can get stuck in using our perfectly decent spiritual practices or personal growth practices as a way to check out of just being a human being.  I may be in the minority here, but I don't think this is ultimately a great thing.  I think that in order to live well, we need to embrace our need for spiritual depth (a term I use very broadly) as well as our need to be fully human.

As time goes on, I'm sure that my attention to the desire for more fun and humor in my life will lead me in directions I don't anticipate.  I already notice myself feeling less do-or-die intensity, and a greater capacity for focusing on what is amusing in a given situation.  It will be interesting to see where it all goes from here.

 

Independence

My first thought when I woke up this morning was, "Hey! I know! I'm going to write about independence!" Here in the United States, it's July 4, Independence Day, so hooray for timeliness and appropriateness.

When I think of Independence Day, I think of fireworks, picnics, crowds of happy people (or drunk people, or both) listening to loud music. I think of camping trips or visits to my father's house to go swimming in the summer. I think of the different celebrations I went to with different relatives.

In recent years, I've thought more about the concept of "independence" as a whole. In my work with students with special needs, one of the major areas of focus is on supporting students with the tools and skills they need to increase their ability to be independent, so as it turns out, independence is a fundamental aspect of my day job. However, I find that questions about dependence, independence, and interdependence seep into areas of my personal life, as well. What does it mean to live in a culture where people pride themselves on independence? Does independence have a "dark side"? If so, what is it? What does it mean as a person to live in an independent way? Well, here are a few of my thoughts on that.

When I was in my professional training program in college, I remember a lab in which we were discussing independence. Our teacher said something that lodged itself into my brain and stayed there: independence is the ability to use a variety of different tools, strategies, and techniques to get us where we want to be, and the freedom to choose among them.

Over the past ten years, this definition has floated into my mind from time to time, mostly when I am trying to decide what approach to take with a particular student in instruction. My tendency is to err on the side of increasing independence, to set up the circumstances so that the student has the opportunity to learn and use different tools and strategies, as well as to practice the decision-making and problem solving skills that necessarily go along with them.

It strikes me how much of independence has to do with an internal process of coming to a conclusion and choosing a course of action. This may be etymologically incorrect, but I think of independence as in-dependence: dependence turned inward, or dependence upon oneself. I don't mean this in a kind of "I can do everything on my own" mentality – which I think is one of the dark sides of independence – but as a reliance upon oneself to make reasonable and appropriate decisions, using the strategies available. This process necessarily includes the option to ask someone else for help or to make the conscious decision to rely upon or depend on someone else.

The last thought I have for now about independence is that this definition can be helpful for people who might have a tendency to rely too much on the opinions of others and who have the tendency to self-censor. If one believes he or she is too dependent upon the opinions or ideas of others – real or imagined – new skills can be learned and new choices can be made. We do not have to imprison ourselves in a limited concept of who we are if we do not choose to. Sometimes making the choice to change and be different is a matter of being willing to learn and practice something new. While this can be uncomfortable, I think the long-term benefits are worth the process of learning, experimenting, adjusting, and learning again.