Roach Creative

What makes you laugh? Have you ever stopped to deeply examine what brings on this spontaneous and typically accepted behavioral response?

Now most of us censor ourselves, i.e. we don’t laugh at TRADITIONAL funerals out of consideration for those in grief and TRADITIONAL social form of respect for the deceased. Now some of us have been to funerals where we were encouraged to NOT wear black, but to celebrate with each other – not that the person is dead, but to honor the full spectrum of emotional fullness the deceased dignified in the life they lived.

When your boss passes gas, it makes a loud noise and smells awful, but you may stop the smile from breaking broadly across your face before they notice it and redirect their embarrassment-turned-anger at you . You hide your reaction. You may have been raised it’s the polite thing to do. You may have learned to even dull the wince of the aroma striking your olfactory senses – you have the discipline to breath the stinky air! You actually reward yourself. You take pride, you pat yourself on the back for your victory, your rise above a brush with the potentially unsanitary condition we all deal with in life.

It’s not funny. But it is.

And this is exactly the point of learning more about your own inner life.

No. Not about potty humor. It’s about seeing what strikes you as funny. It could be about race, sex or even about the color blue. No matter what it is, it might be an outcrop or the tip of the iceberg to something larger.

The point where your cognitive acceptance meets the unknown shadows of the stuff you suppress, what you don’t want to openly be identified or associated with, is exactly the insight you may find helpful to become a more well rounded person.

Comedy is an interesting entry point into self awareness. If you are a student of circumstance, you find keys in the states we operate in that are beyond our complete control and awareness. When you find yourself struck with sneezing or the hiccups, it’s quite common we look at the cause. Not that there’s full resolution in ascertaining the cause, but it does provide some comfort, false as it may be, that “everything is going to be alright.”

Hollywood acting coaches and writers talk about the formulas to keep the audience engaged. Advertisers and social media designers know these “secrets” quite well. It’s the source of their wealth and influence. These same principles can be harnessed by the regular Joe, the common person, to gain control of their lives. It starts with your own awareness.

Comedy is widely known as being the most difficult medium to contrive. Horror the easiest and cheapest to pull off successfully. That means your fears are most accessible by showing you violence. Then there’s sex. Yes, romantic comedy is thought to be the most difficult of the comedy.

So let’s leave it at this point for now. Share your experience and comments with me (if you dare or find comfort in this medium) and if there’s some interest, we’ll examine how to unpack, what you find funny. It may lead you into some “woo-woo” place, some of those areas where you are surprised that you trust blindly.

Some people say they really don’t want to know more than they deal with on the surface. Well, that’s fine. Everyone has their time and it very may well occur at another time, when you really find yourself needing to look deeper. You or a loved one, a friend or a colleague may strike a fire, a passion in you to find out where that cancer began or why that overdose occurred from that seemingly safe Xanax you got from a friend was laced with an opioid.

So when “woo-woo” is funny, watch out, because something deeper may be operating more powerfully in you than you realize. You may not be heading toward having the last laugh, but if you become more aware, you just might.