The above T-Shirt was originally posted by “Funny Shit” on Facebook and I passed along the sharing. I figure if it is shareable there, it is shareable here. I like the point it makes, for it is easy to forget that our moods are part of us that leak into the public square and all of us have been buoyed or afflicted by the moods of those around us.
Everyone gets mood poisoning from time to time. It is a stupid indulgence to simply let it remain and take no account of the price others pay along with you. Humor is one of the best cures for it.
My wife and I have known from the beginning that a shared sense of humor was more important to our marriage’s well-being than sex. Both create a special social bond, but humor has longer lasting legs and is definitely more portable!
On a bigger scale, we have an intimate public square in my country. We are a country of immigrants and hatred rears its ugly head in various spots. We hate “others” all too often and it spoils the body politic. So, how do we deal with that? We use our free speech rights. My old mentor from college, the late Dr. Leon Rappoport, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Kansas State University was a fine Social Psychologist and he addressed this issue head on in what I believe was his last book:
It is through our humor that we uncover and deal with our prejudices in a constructive way, especially if we let go of our own pretensions about who we are as well as who the “others” are. The Broadway musical “Avenue Q” dealt with it beautifully with this song:
Humor, a nice antidote to mood poisoning. Seriously.
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I love that t-shirt and agree with you, that humour is a nice antidote to mood poisoning!
ReplyDelete@Grannymar
ReplyDeleteA good mood fosters good decisions, too! Mixing in a little love is almost always the sweetener of life.
One of my mentees is grapling with deep rooted hatred towards his own caste, which is India's poison akin to racism. I am sure that you would have sensed it in the fb comments that we exchange. It has become such a dominant feature of his thought process that reason did not work. What is working, I hope, is humour. When I joke about it and point out the silliness of it, he relaxes. I hope to eventually get him out of that but it is taking an eternity. Yes, humour can be a powerful antidote to hate.
ReplyDelete@Rummuser
ReplyDeleteHumor is the great defuser. Some situations are so difficult and so persistent!