The gift of humor

Many of you know that I just moved last week. Just next door. Somehow I thought that because it was so short a distance it would be an easier move than most. Now that was silly, wasn't it? All the usual hassles of moving still happened and more besides. The ultimate mishap was having the faucet to the bathtub snap off in my hand while I was trying to turn the water off. There I was with the water running, no working faucet and, to top it all off, my phone didn't work. Fortunately, I remembered the slogan, "If it will be funny later, it's funny now!"

Well, the plumber came and I got a new faucet and the phone company finally got its act together and I thought things had finally settled down. But wouldn't you know it, this morning they cut my water off! Seems the guy who lived here before me hadn't paid his bill and somehow the office folks hadn't yet transferred my account.

So I really appreciated the passage I found a few minutes ago in Journey of Awakening by Ram Dass:

Did you ever have a bad day? Everything seems to go wrong and you are completely lost in anger, frustration, and self-pity. It gets worse and worse, until the final moment when, say, you have just missed the last bus. There is some critical point where it gets so bad the absurdity of it all overwhelms you and you can do nothing but laugh. At that moment you uplevel your predicament, you see the cosmic joke in your own suffering.

Meditation, because of the space it allows around events, gives you the chance to see the humor of your predicament. Awareness of the passing show of one's own life allows a lightness to enter in where only a moment before there was heaviness.

Humor puts things in perspective.

Doesn't it just? I really am so grateful for the meditative process because I can now laugh about situations that used to infuriate me. What's really fun is the ability to laugh at my own inner reactions. Meditation has taught me that I don't have to identify with my thoughts. So it's easy to sit loose to what arises in my mind and see it as enormously funny. Sometimes I don't do that instantly but I think the process works retroactively! At whatever point I'm able to see the humor in a situation, then the whole event is something I can take lightly. Try this: Sit for a few minutes in meditation and to whatever thought arises say, "Well, that's funny," and then return to the meditative support. Do this over a period of a week or so and see if your sense of humor doesn't expand. You'll be amazed!