I love to make people laugh. It’s a true pleasure. As far as I can tell, there are two distinct approaches to comedy just as there are two distinct approaches to life. The choice is love or fear. Both are funny, but tearing people down for entertainment value leaves me feeling unclean. Making fun of people feels cowardly. To be loving takes courage. I can always tell the fear-based comedy because it sounds angry. Anger and sarcasm are popular ways to express fear. And they can definitely get a laugh.
Until I was about 30 years old, I cultivated my ability to let loose with a real zinger. In any situation I could fall back on my sarcastic wit. The payoff was that I was always a welcome guest. There was no end to my sarcasm, my judgment, my anger. My bile was as boundless as the sea. Then, one day I woke up and I was drowning in what I had so carefully cultivated. I saw the destructiveness of my way of being in the world. I made a full commitment to change.
I began to practice what the inspired mystic Joel Goldsmith knew, “Every time we acknowledge our neighbor as sinful, poor, sick, or dead, every time we acknowledge him to be other than the Son of God, we are bearing false witness against our neighbor.” [Practicing the Presence, page 75]
I still love to laugh and humor naturally emerges in everything I do. I like to think that most of it comes from my basic love of humanity. Part of my practice of nonviolence is to stop promoting fear through sarcasm and making fun of people. Interestingly, I laugh more easily now. I am lighter and my humor lifts people up in a real and beneficial way.
