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Today's upsets are tomorrow's
laughs
by Allen Klein
In looking for humor, keep in
mind this guideline: Sometimes it takes a little time to see
the humor in your upsets; you may not find something to laugh
about immediately.
H. G. Wells once said, "The crisis of
today is the joke of tomorrow." Some of our most trying
moments turn into laughing matter when we look back at them.
Things that seemed unbearable at one time often turn out,
in hindsight, to somehow have humor in them after all.
Erma Bombeck, the First Lady of household
comedy, admits that it often takes a second glance at our
problems before we see the humor in them. "I can't tell
you how many times I've slammed the doors and thrown myself
on the bed," she relates, "and I'm calling convents
at two in the morning and saying, 'Take me, please.' It's
only in retrospect that it has any humor whatsoever."
Bombeck elaborates on this in an interview
in USA Today. "When I had a cold it was absolutely tragic.
I knew I was going to the big utility room in the sky. I got
so sick of seeing this woman on television saying, 'Don't
hate me for being beautiful.' You feel so ugly when you have
a cold—your nose is running, your hair won't curl. But
today it seems ridiculous. You need that time span to get
a perspective."
Sometimes it takes ten seconds to see some
humor in your dilemmas, sometimes ten years. The gap between
your upset and the period when humor becomes obvious varies
greatly, but you can shorten the gap. The next time you find
yourself in a troublesome situation, stop for a moment and
ask yourself what will it look like in a month, in six months,
in a year, or when you are eighty-five. If you can remember
to say "Some day I might laugh at this," you will
be closer to doing so.
(Excerpted from The Healing Power of Humor,
Tarcher/Putnam, Inc., 1989, by Allen Klein)
Please
visit Allen Klein's web site for more
HEALING HUMOR
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