"Life must be ridiculous. We must find the adventure in everything. We must laugh madly at ourselves. Life is far too important to take seriously"
Yaela
I used to take life very seriously. Like a naughty child wanting attention, life would do all sorts of tricks on me in my seriousness. Until the point where I played back. Then, it stopped with its tricks. I am quite sure that life plays a humourous game with us in order to help us discover our humour. Humour is the release of control. You cannot be angry (which is all about control) and laugh at the same time. I hate the saying "let go and let G-d", but there is some truth there.
My modus operati is seriousness, so if you're anything like me, you:- expect the worst - read other people's minds for the worst - play out all the could-go-wrongs - assume everything comes only from hard work
Switching tracks in your mind will lead to a very different relationship with life. But it will take the cultivation of practice. Just the other day, I was late to get home for a client. I ordered a taxi, it took longer than usual to come. Eventually it arrived and I would make it just in time. Then, the taxi broke down, it started to rain, and, my phone. ALL AT ONCE. Immediate response: panic. Old pattern. Then, because I have been cultivating the ridiculous for a while now. I laughed. Threw my hands in the air and said, okay, what do we do now? I arrived, twenty minutes late. I apologised. We went over time. And I mirrored self and life-forgiveness, a relaxed demeanor and an ability to laugh. Rather than be a perfect therapist who is perfectly on-time, something far more real, far more alive and far more relatable happened there. So, some ideas to try out in your daily life:
write with your opposite hand
take a photograph of three ridiculous things you observe in the week, send it to someone who needs a laugh
create art-work with things that DO NOT classify as art material
make a prank phone-call
play with a child, truly play (don't pretend)
fake that you are a foreigner in your city and struggle to speak the language
ask for directions even if you know the way, just to interact with people, to learn to ask for help, to practice not-needing-to-know
do something that you've always wanted to do but been afraid to try
