I hope this one will be a short one, but let’s see where this goes as we write it. I often observe people around me and on social media. A small incident happens, and suddenly, everyone is enraged. Now, there are certainly issues worth getting angry about, but most of the things people lose their cool over aren’t that serious. I see people at events, weddings, and even casual gatherings, constantly angry or frustrated. Some people seem to be angry by default. Others need just a slight nudge in the wrong direction to unleash their wrath. It feels like, overall, the tolerance level of people has gone down. Everyone is ready to blow up at the slightest inconvenience. But where am I going with all this? Well, in short, I mean that life, with a capital L, is already serious enough with all the suffering it brings. Why are we ruining our days, and others’, by taking every little thing so seriously? This brings me to the importance of humour in life and why we shouldn’t take everything so damn seriously.
Since childhood, I’ve been a smiley-faced kid, both in terms of facial structure and demeanour. (Though some close friends might argue otherwise, but let’s ignore them for now.) To a great extent, I’ve always had a smile on my face. I think this came from my tendency to avoid conflict. I often tried to calm situations down, encouraging people to chill (cue the chill guy memes). As a result, you’ll usually find me joking about stuff. And trust me, there are plenty of people out there who don’t take life too seriously. If you don’t believe me, just check the Instagram or YouTube comment sections. Whenever there’s a serious conversation happening in a post or video, scroll down to the comments. You’ll find people cracking jokes, and instantly, your mood will lighten. Of course, we need to be careful not to desensitize serious situations, but without that slight sense of humour, we’d be a depressed society almost overnight.
The benefits of humour are immense. It makes you more accepting of different points of view. You stop taking everything to heart. This allows you to engage with various concepts and topics more freely, topics like racism, body shaming, LGBTQ+ issues, feminism, politics, religion, casteism, and other real-life issues that are often very serious. A sense of humour helps you become more accepting of all sides of the aisle. It broadens your perspective because you’re able to joke about multiple viewpoints. When you step back and observe, you’ll see the sadness with which people fight over these topics. You’ll realize that very few are actually contributing solutions or constructive insights. Most are just caught up in the noise.
On the flip side, while the pros of not taking life too seriously outweigh the cons, there are some serious considerations. It’s possible to take this approach too far and end up desensitizing yourself to everything. You might stop feeling sad or bad about things that genuinely deserve empathy. This can be harmful, especially in relationships. Your partner or friend might be saying something serious, and if you take it too lightly, it could damage the relationship. Instead of de-escalating, you might end up escalating the situation. I’ve been in those situations quite a few times, where I’ve taken something lightly, but the other person misunderstood me because I joked about it. In my mind, I’m thinking, “Calm down, bro/gal,” but to them, it comes off as dismissive. It can also lead to people not taking you seriously because they only see the humorous side of your personality.
It can get even more serious if humour becomes your default coping mechanism. Instead of dealing with serious issues, you joke about them. And again, I stand here as a prime example of this. I’ve realized this over time, and therapy has shown me even more side effects of this behaviour. That constant mask of happiness can one day suck out all the joy from your life. But let’s not make this blog any more serious (let's keep that for another blog), I wanted to keep it light, after all.
Some regular readers might point out, “How are you telling us to take things lightly when you’re the one who takes them so seriously?” That’s a fair question, especially based on my past blogs. But here’s the thing: all the deep and serious stuff I talk about in my blogs is related to Life, which, let’s be honest, demands seriousness at times. However, if anyone knows me personally, they’ll tell you how much I joke about everything, good, bad, ugly, and even dark. The ability to make references to various aspects of life, memes, and topics in a joke is a skill that needs to be developed. I’ve come across very few people in life who can match this, and I’d like to mention a few here. These people have been responsible for some of the most incredible laughs in my life: Indrajeet, Pratham, Tarekh, Nilaya, Sai, Abdul, Aman, and my prime inspiration, the one who started me on this journey of humour, Abhishek.
I’ll end this by saying that life is too serious to take it seriously. So, chill, bro.