The Shadow of Laughter

Most of my life for the past 10 years or so has been devoted to two things: God, and the art of jokes and making people laugh. Sadly, the majority of that time has been spent on the jokes, but that is a for another post perhaps. During recent years, I have started to analyze the way I tell jokes and the tangible effects it has on my life, and while I haven't come to any solid conclusions, I have come to understand that the jokes and the laughter I desperately seek is an issue. One should never 'desperately seek' anything as temporary as a joke, as that is in essence an act of pride presented through self indulgence. But, at least in this case, I don't believe it is that simple. I will explain.

As noted in the first sentence, I have spent a considerable amount of time crafting my sense of humor. A large majority of that humor I credit to my dad, with my mom adding her knack for puns, as well as somewhat of an ability to absorb and adapt comedic ideas and timing from things that I see. All of this is fine and good, and I feel blessed to have the ability to make people laugh. The problem arises when you start finding your identity in humor, and the telling of jokes transcends light hearted banter, and becomes essentially a tool for survival. Survival in this case is in reference to social situations, and anything having to deal with people. The real issue with this is that humor and jokes are in essence a sham reality. It makes it easy to fit in with groups of people and to be happy enough being around them, but when it is all you have, it keeps you from relating to people in a way that goes deeper than jokes. Jokes exist entirely in the mind, but they do nothing for the heart, and when you get past the joke and a time for serious discussion comes, you find yourself lost. And this, is where I often find myself: in a situation where I can or should interact with a person on some serious level, but I find myself lost, with no inclination of where to go.

Now, I mentioned earlier that the key problem here is finding your identity in humor. Now, I find my identity in God, so that isn't necessarily the whole issue here (so now I'm sure you're wondering why I said that earlier, the answer to which is that it is true, but perhaps in a more general context, the issue at hand has greater specifics). I feel the issue, at least in my case, is that my younger years, where I developed (like everyone) was sort of a vacuum. I didn't have much contact with anyone outside my family. I had church and the kids there, but I was generally alienated by them, so I don't really count them. What this means is that when I started forming my sense of humor around 11-13, that is when I first started really being around people, when I joined a chess club. So during this time of new-found social experience, I feel as though my sense of humor became attached with how I deal with and understand people and social interaction. This is fine when you are younger and nobody really cares about anything, but as you get older you start to see and experience that the laughter fades more and more from the people around you and the goal becomes connection on a personal level. This is where I am right now, basically. I have spent the last year or so really examining my humor, and what its worth actually is, and what I have found is that I value it far, far too much, but at the same time I cannot live without it. That is where the idea of 'survival' I mentioned earlier comes from. For me, my humor has stopped being something I do for fun, and has become more less a job/act of survival in order to stay relevant and in-touch with the people I deal with.

I had a small talk with one of my friends at school about this, in which my thoughts were much less organized, but that is where much of this has come from. I was at school when I really started to see just how desperately I needed to be funny. It is something that comes naturally at this point, certainly, but beyond that, when I believe I have set a certain 'standard of funniness' with any group of people, I feel immense pressure to meet or exceed that standard every time I am among them. And believe me, it is a heavy weight. I believe it is a weight that is entirely self imposed, but the reason I went into my background earlier and how I believe much of the issue lies in how I use humor to identify with people in social situations, and how that is integral part of my social understanding is because that is really where the weight comes from. It is something I did to myself without really understanding what I was doing. I focused purely on developing humor and used that exclusively as a crutch to prop me up socially, not understanding the burden  I accidentally put on myself.

The real dangers of this reach even deeper, unfortunately. As someone who tends to analyze things internally, I start to wonder and question just how valuable my humor is in relation to how other people view me. And this is entirely subjective, but I believe my conclusions here come from reasonably logical places. So, this is probably going to sound/be incredibly self indulgent, but please bear with me. In my own eyes, which are certainly biased, I believe that I simply would not have many friends if it weren't for my ability to tell jokes. Because, as I tried to state earlier, I don't really have any tools or anything to draw from socially other than jokes, so how would they get to know me otherwise? If I didn't or couldn't tell jokes, how would I connect with anyone at all? I don't connect particularly well even in my current state, so without those jokes, where would I be? Why would anyone have reason to talk to me? I have a grumpy face and can look intimidating when I have my beard (one of my friends told me she was scared of me when she first met me). If I wasn't able to pierce through the social bubble in group settings with my jokes, where people could see at least a little of who I am (or, as I would argue, a lot of who I am), why would they talk to me? Granted, being a very amateur bible scholar/student in a group of many others like I was at school, we all had common ground to talk about. This translates to church as well, naturally. But when you get outside of those places, what is left?

My well of social understanding is partially run dry through my immense capacity for apathy. I generally don't care about a lot, but I do care about people, which makes my situation quite frustrating. I want to understand and be able to connect with people beyond the surface level that is humor, but I simply don't know how. And without that ability to connect in an important way, I, in my own eyes, have very little social value. That isn't to say the things I have to say and share have no value. My views on God and Jesus and the Bible are important, even though many of them are probably wrong in some way, I believe I get the core and can share eternity with people. What is more important than that? Nothing, really. But that doesn't mean we can simply exist among other people and not deal with them in basic, emotional-connection driven ways. And that, is what I simply do not have.

And that is why I titled this post 'The Shadow of Laughter'. Because up front is the jovial laughter and good-natured sarcasm that most people experience. But behind the face telling those jokes, there is a scared, desperately anxious man hiding in the shadow of his own humor, hoping nobody walks across the line and shines a light to try and see who I really am, because I fear they won't see much.

I understand all of this has been incredibly selfish and self-centered. In the conclusions I have come to I have tried to use as sound logic and reason as possible, and tried to be as objective about myself as I could. I feel as though this analysis is healthy, and that writing it down helps me sort of transfer the load I feel mentally. In short, I am sad that this is what my humor has come to. I am tired of trying to meet certain self-imposed standards of how I interact with people in order to maintain importance in their eyes (so I don't disappear entirely as a social entity, basically), and I don't know how to get away from that. I don't want to be loved or listened to or lauded or praised by people, I am not looking for attention. I just want to be able to connect with them, to understand them in a deeper way, and to be able to open myself up for them to understand, and my own propensity for jokes, I feel, stops me from doing that.

Of course, this could all be a joke. Interestingly, that little sentence in conjunction with who you know me to be, perhaps has you wondering if this was indeed all a joke, considering my large capacity for satire. I'll let you figure that one out.