One of the enriching blessings of growing older all the time
is that it has a way of improving one's sense of humor — or
at least it should. The person without a good sense of
humor is a person to avoid as though he were a known carrier
of the plague.
Horace Walpole once said, "I have never yet seen or heard
anything serious that was not ridiculous." And Samuel
Butler said, "The one serious conviction that a man should
have is that nothing is to be taken seriously." It has been said
that seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. Oscar
Wilde said, "It is a curious fact that the worst work is always
done with the best intentions, and that people are never so
trivial as when they take themselves very seriously."
I remember that when I was in the service, one of the
toughest jobs I had was to keep from laughing at the wrong
times — during an admiral's inspection, for example. There
is nothing funnier than the seriousness of the military, especially
high-ranking military. The fancy costumes, the
panoply, the shining sabers, the serious faces — it was all,
to me, hilariously funny.
We can be serious about situations. When a youngster is
ill or hurt, or someone insults your spouse, you can get very
serious about the situation in a hurry. But that's not taking
ourselves seriously. That's different.
The thing that bothered me about Hemingway, as much
as I admired his work, was that I thought he tended to take
himself too seriously. He didn't seem to be able to laugh
at himself. And I think he suffered from this flaw in his
character.
I have found it a good rule of thumb to be slightly suspicious
of anyone who takes himself too seriously. There's
usually something fishy there someplace. I think this is
why we love children so much: Life is a game to them. They
will do their best at whatever work is given them, but they
never seem to lose their ebullient sense of humor; there is
always a sparkle of humor in their eyes. When a child lacks
this, he is usually in need of help.
Dictators are famous for their lack of humor. The mark of
a cruel person is that he doesn't seem to be able to see anything
funny in the world. And, a sense of humor was what
was so great about Mark Twain. No matter how serious the
subject, he could find the humor in it and bring it out. All
the great comedians have this ability to see what's funny in
the so-called serious situation. They can poke fun at themselves.
There are those who believe that a sense of humor is
the only thing that has kept the human race from totally
extinguishing itself.
People who are emotionally healthy, with a sense of proportion,
are cheerful people. They tend to look upon the
bright side of things and see a lot of humor in their daily
lives. They're not Pollyannas — they know what's going on
and that a lot of it's not at all funny — but they don't permit
the dark side of things to dominate their lives. To my mind,
when a person lacks a sense of humor, there's something
pretty seriously wrong with him.
Samuel Butler said, "A sense of humor keen enough to
show a man his own absurdities as well as those of other
people will keep a man from the commission of all sins, or
nearly all, save those that are worth committing."
It took a sense of humor to write that, and only people
with blank spaces where their senses of humor should be
will find it offensive. There's something so healthy about
laughter, especially when it's directed at ourselves.
There are times for all of us when all the laughter seems
to be gone, but we should not permit these periods to last too
long. When we've lost our sense of humor, there isn't very
much left. We become ridiculous. We must then go to war
against the whole world, and that's a war we cannot win.
Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his all-time bestselling programs The Strangest Secret and Lead the Field.