“Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.”
- Cullen Hightower
Laughter is medicinal, but unfortunately some people don’t take kindly to being laughed at. Take it from a guy who knows.
It’s a shame you can’t go around laughing at people though. It would be healthy if you didn’t have to worry about people knocking your lights out.
Regardless, make sure that the next time you make a mistake you laugh at yourself.
“Never fight an inanimate object.”
- J. O’Rourke
This quote has unexpected meaning for me today.
Sure, at first glance it’s just funny. I picture a guy fighting a couch, or a rock, or maybe a tree. His knuckles are bloody, the inanimate object isn’t sustaining any noticeable damage, and the guy just looks silly. His rage, his folly, and the futility of his actions are all standing out strong.
Today my mind was flooded with chaos when two work related training opportunities hit at the same time. They don’t conflict with each other, but they are both mandatory, and they will turn my life upside down. Lots of complications, both with work and with my family life, began tearing through my brain. It was like a couple of furious tornadoes ripping through the middle of New York City. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t make sense of anything.
I guess they call this panic.
The thing is, I don’t generally experience panic in this way. Events don’t set my panic mode off. Situations do, but not by surprise. For example, I know I will panic if someone draws a syringe from their pocket and attempts to jab me with it. I experience irrational fear in the presence of needles. That definitely causes panic. To a lesser degree, I know I will panic in a crowded place if I become stressed. Stress doesn’t make me panic, but stress on top of over-stimulation (such as being around too many people) will generally make me panic a little.
It’s a rare thing to see me panic, even just in my head, in the face of unexpected situations. I am familiar with my limits, and with what makes me panic. But today, in a situation that would normally only cause a fit of frustration, I panicked.
Thankfully, I was able to calm myself down and work my way through the problems. I made a phone call, wrote an email, spoke with my boss, and soon had pretty much set everything up to handle the two training events.
Thinking back on it, my panic mode could have led to me attempting to fight against what had happened. Perhaps part of what had jammed up my logic was that I knew there were forces involved that I couldn’t influence, and yet I couldn’t stop my mind from frantically exploring every possible avenue in search of a solution. Those are forbidden paths, I told myself. You can’t seek solutions there! And yet, the raging storm had already begun, and I just had to wait for the power to die down.
It may have been a unique experience for me, but I have seen it happen before in others. People tend to have these sorts of irrational confrontations with problems from time to time. I think it’s natural.
Being as stressed as I was this morning (the two training events obviously weren’t the only things on my plate at the time), I don’t know what I could have done to prevent that little panic attack, but I do know what prevents the more common, but less intense panic attacks I see in others. It is important to identify the inanimate objects in a problem.
You must choose your battles. You cannot fight against just any element of a problem. Where are the stones? Where are the trees? If you’re trying to solve a problem, but you’re not getting anything but bloody knuckles, perhaps you’re just fighting an inanimate object. The objects you need to fight are almost always contained within yourself.
You should first look inside of yourself and see what you can attack inside of you that might fix the problem. Have you acted immaturely? Have you been selfish? Have you been negligent? Have you made a mistake? Fix it first, then reevaluate. Continue the process until the only things left that could possibly be keeping the problem alive are outside of you. Then look closely at things that reside in your circle of influence. Is there anything that you definitely have some degree of control over that could be changed to fix the problem?
Finally, as a last resort, if nothing in your circle of influence can solve the problem, you begin looking for the right targets on the outside. You find the responsible individual. You find the right tactic. You plan ahead. You strategize. This is where one of my favorite books comes into play. The Art of War taught me a lot about fighting to win.
But in the beginning, ensure that you are not about to engage in battle with an inanimate object. That would just be silly.
“We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.”
- Kin Hubbard
Oh boy. Here we go.
I guess it was “Super Tuesday” or something today. In case you haven’t picked up on it before, I’m not really that into politics. Politicians and their squabbling bother me. I know they do a lot of important work too, or at least they fill a necessarily evil position (or is it a necessary evil?). Either way, they all bother me.
Since this is a presidential election year, I’ll probably share quite a few political quotes with my thoughts. I have several.
This quote’s straight forward and requires little to no explanation.
I can never pick which candidate to vote for because they are all made of plastic, full of hot air and empty calories, prone to flattery and lies, and their singular goal is to make me want them to lead me – not to fix problems. I don’t want a leader who is willing to do all of that political malarkey to get my vote. I would fight my way through a zombie apocalypse to get to the polls if a candidate seemed truly honest, sincerely interested in reason and logic, benevolently invested in improving the country, and made little to no effort to win people over with butt-kissing and nitpicking. The butt-kissing and nitpicking over insignificant issues always turns me off. So they can all forget about my vote until someone comes around who deserves it.
“Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.”
- Erma Bombeck
The fact that this is one of my favorite quotes should tell you that I’m not a big football fan. In fact, I don’t watch football at all.
I used to though. In high school I played in the marching band and attended every single home game and a few away games for four years. It isn’t my most pleasant memory, but it did teach me a lot about what I don’t like about football.
However, due to a recent decision to avoid acting on or entertaining too many negative thoughts, I’m not going to write about all the things I don’t like about football. Instead, I’m going to write about the one thing that I love about football.
That’s right, the world’s most adamant football avoider does love one thing about the sport.
I love how tactical football is. I’ve spent a lot of time looking for a good game to test my ability to strategize and create tactics. I don’t care for real-time strategy games, Risk has too much stock in the roll of the dice, and chess is too restrictive for me.
Although I don’t care for any of the physical aspects of football, I do have to admit that it is one of the most amazingly tactical sports out there. The strategies involved, the planning, and even the brutality are the most akin to war of any sport in my opinion.
I love what I read and learned in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and I can’t think of a better sport to apply its lessons than football. This doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing me involved in football any time soon, it’s just meant to show you that I do admire the sport for something.
Of course, I also have a deep respect for the level of physical training and fitness that football players have to achieve and maintain. So you can see it’s not so much the sport and it’s participants that I have problems with, it’s the fans. I completely agree with Erma Bombeck when she says that anyone who watches three games of it in a row should be declared brain dead.
“Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.”
- Dame Edna Everage
Some of my favorite wisdom comes from quotes by comedians. Something about understanding the science of humor must make comedians unusually wise. They just seem to really “get” what it means to be alive.
Obviously this is not a universally applicable rule, but I particularly love when comedians make wisdom funny. I suppose my favorite way to deal with life is to make light of it. Sure, there are some things that should be taken seriously, but everything else should be taken as lightly as possible.
It always bothers me when people react to jokes with law suits, violence or threats.
One of my favorite Internet humorists is David Thorne. He often pokes fun at people, sometimes pushing the joke past “the line” with certain individuals. I believe the problem these people have is that they take themselves too seriously.
The existence of these people is a thorn in the side of anyone wishing to make humor in a way that could be considered even remotely offensive. I, myself, have recently come up against this problem while attempting to promote my own work of humorous fiction. I have to keep reminding myself that not everyone will be able to take the jokes for “jokes.”
I think that, most of the time, when people can’t take a joke it is because they are taking it personally. This means that somewhere inside of them they identify with the joke in a way that personalizes it. Even if the joke wasn’t directed at them personally, they take it personally and choose to become offended. That’s when I would say that they are taking themselves too seriously. They should not be afraid to laugh at those things that they identify personally with. By laughing they can participate in the benefits of humor. They can stay happy. By choosing to become offended, not only do they miss the opportunity to feel good, they take an opportunity to become bitter and sometimes even hateful.
I, for one, love making light of as much of life as possible. I believe that even God has a sense of humor. It can make hard times bearable, it can make the sun shine on a cloudy day, and it can make good memories out of any situation. Who would want to trade all of that for living constantly at odds with the world? And, when I’m trying to make someone’s day with a touch of humor, why should I have to live in fear that he’ll take himself too seriously?
This particular instance with my friend Autumn (yes, she’s female) could have turned out ugly:
Lucky for me, most of my friends don’t take themselves too seriously. Now if only that attitude were a little more universal.
“When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.”
- George Bernard Shaw
I wanted to get this one done early and “stick” it to the front page of this blog because it is going to be a common theme in this project. Many of the most beloved quotes in history are humorous in nature. I love getting a little chuckle out of a quote, and it’s nice when the wisdom behind the humor is obvious. Many times, though, the wisdom may not be so obvious.
One of the missions behind this little project is for me to discover the hidden wisdom or truth behind every quote, funny or not. Of course, many times my interpretation of the truth will be highly personal, but that’s why I want your comments too.
I encourage any visitor to this site who finds a quote they like to share a brief comment on the quote. In this way we will all find the truth and wisdom behind the quotes we love.
