A Therapist Walks Into a Bar….

Part 6 of a 10-part series on character traits of happy people

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road. – Henry Ward Beecher

I’m finding humor oddly difficult to write about, probably because it’s so important to me, and there’s no way I’m going to do it justice. Humor is really complicated. It can be tragic, silly, juvenile, sophisticated, intellectual, cheerful, and macabre.

It’s universal – every culture has laughter (sometimes I wonder about my Catholic homies, but there’s some Lenten humor out there, so I guess they’re not lost). Humor is vital to the Irish culture. They’ve managed to find humor in death, war and starvation. May you have eyes in your head and not in your potatoes, and all that.

It’s also life-saving.  Humor has helped me cope with some of the darkest periods of my life. It’s not surprising that it’s been defined as one of the core character strengths that compromise resiliency.

It’s kind of hard to explain exactly why humor is so vital, though. You just know it is. I tried to read some scholarly articles about humor and psychology, and if anyone can drain the life out of a topic, it’s an academic. I don’t want to academically analyze humor. You know it’s important. You know a laugh on a bad day makes you feel better. The great thing is, it’s usually all around you,  although sometimes you have to look a bit harder for it.

Humor is also vastly personal. You might not think the same things are funny as I do. Lots of people like LOLCats, but they’re not really my thing, except for Grumpy Cat, whom I think might be my spirit animal.

Feel free to share the sites you go to cheer yourself up and laugh. Here are some of mine:

Safety Graphic Fun: One of the first funny things I found on the internet was a graphic of funny captions for well-meaning safety signs. Here’s a blog collecting others.

Cake Wrecks: It’s not nice to laugh at other people’s mistakes, unless they’re really funny. They also publish really beautiful cakes on Sundays, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Cracked.com: They have a way of polishing up what you’re already thinking. They’re irreverent and usually not safe for kids, but always funny.

Awkward Family Photos: Again, not nice to laugh at people, I know. Fortunately, my guilt about this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that most of them are submitted by the subjects in the photos.