A sense of humor
Monday, August 10 2009
Kairol at Everything Changes flattered me by asking for advice (via email) on what to tell the reporter behind this story on cancer humor. I’m less flattered that she didn’t take my advice, which I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing here:
Were it me, I would just screw with the reporter. [...] I would make up jokes that were obnoxiously unfunny, and tell him “oh, it’s totally hilarious – if you have cancer.” This isn’t the sort of thing that gets scrupulously fact-checked, so you might sneak some by him.
Kairol didn’t tell me in her email that the reporter herself was a cancer survivor, so I see now why she decided not to take my advice.
Kairol says she is not funny. Well, sure – not everyone can be funny. But humor and funny are not the same thing. As it happens, I am an internationally recognized expert on humor: I won the Muir Prize several years ago. So I can tell you Kairol has at least a decent sense of humor, because I am qualifed to render such decisions. Moreover, I base my judgment on Dave Barry’s definition of humor:
A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.
Having a sense of humor is absolutely necessary to dealing with illness; if you can’t appreciate how devoid of reason the world can be, the horror of illness will consume you. I think Kairol gets it: she’s quoted in the article, saying, “I believe in the power of realistic thinking…. And the reality is, you know, this sucks.” That’s a sense of humor, hard at work. And the beauty of a sense of humor is that it only has to work for you. It doesn’t have to make other people laugh. It only has to help you survive.
There’s a women, Brenda Elsagher, who makes her living writing and speaking about her experiences with cancer. She bills herself as a comedian, but I’ve seen her speak to a support group. I found her deadly unfunny. I don’t think I laughed the whole time she spoke, except to be polite. But lots of other folks – older people, mostly – were howling. You know what? That’s okay. They needed it; she helped them find a sense of humor about their illness. Some people will love Hang In There Kitty, and some people won’t. There’s nothing wrong with that.
The problem, I think, comes from the assumption that there is a Platonic ideal of humor, to which we should all aspire. What makes you laugh might not make me laugh, and in fact might annoy the crap out of me. Personally, I despise Hang In There Kitty – and I get angry when people try to force that sort of humor on me. My sense of humor is much bleaker, darker, perhaps even vicious (scroll down). I’m not going to say that makes me funnier or better than anyone else – obviously, I’m not. But that pitch-black sense of humor is a big part of what keeps me going. So when Kairol says cancer isn’t funny, she’s speaking from her own sense of humor, from what works for her. You should make up your own mind whether cancer is ever funny.
To some extent, what we see as funny is a decision – or an indication – about how much of our anxiety we’re willing to express. I’m willing to make jokes about death and disease because I’m perfectly willing to express my anxiety about those things. I find that anxiety expressed is anxiety defeated. Yet for a long time, I felt that Crohn’s disease was off-limits to humor. I just couldn’t find a way to express my anxiety in a way that didn’t leave me feeling utterly vulnerable and humiliated. I think part of the problem was that I was still looking for a reason; I still wanted it to make sense.
Eventually, I gave up. I decided it will never make sense. There will never be a reason why I have Crohn’s disease. And knowing that makes possible two things: first, I can laugh about Crohn’s disease. I am pretty sure I can make it funny to other people, too – which is part of what I’m trying to accomplish with LoM. To wit, I have a disease which makes me poop. Everybody knows poop jokes are funny. I have a disease which is a nearly endless source of poop jokes. It can be funny, QED. But getting to that point took getting over myself – embracing the humiliating nature of my condition, so that I could sublimate that humiliation into something laughable (I hope).
Second: now that I have quit looking for meaning in my illness, I can start making it mean whatever I want. That’s another goal of LoM, as well as this blog. I want to define what it means to be ill, at least for me, and to choose what I get from my life with illness. And if I have a choice between tears and laughter, I’m going to laugh every time.
Duncan, it says a lot about you that you’ve gotten over yourself so that you’re comfortable with poop jokes. I’m not there yet, even though I’m a health professional myself (I coach people with Crohn’s and other chronic illnesses). For me (I too have Crohn’s disease), those jokes hit too close to home.
One of the people I’ve found to be tremendously inspiring for getting over himself is Richard Cohen, the author of Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness. In the book he describes how, after his colon was removed (because of cancer), his bag fell off when he was at a business lunch. He started to laugh and told the others, “I have to go now. My bag broke. You know how annoying that can be.” I’m amazed at his ability to be that calm and collected. I cringe at the memories of some of the things I’ve gone through, and they’re no where near as embarrasing as what happened to Cohen.
D.,
I’m dying of a degenerative brain disease. Before, I was dying, death jokes that many found tasteless, I thought were mighty tasty. Now that I am dying, I find they taste even better with a couple of helpings of dark fudge pudding with whipped cream on top.
What is a silkee? If you are a silkee you know it. If you have to ask it is just the stuff of fairy tales.
E.