My Good Sense Says I Won’t Be Offended
Sometimes I wonder if we have any sense at all. I mean we, all of us – any of us. Start with the five senses – sight and sound, touch and taste, smell. How many of us really pay attention to what we have? It seems there is less and less these days of interacting with nature, with being outdoors; of interacting with sensory input that we haven’t fabricated for ourselves, like cities largely devoid of nature, computers that create imaginary inner worlds, and AI agents that do, think, even act for us.
What happened to self-reliance, to independent thought? Have most of our other worldly senses, like horse sense, common sense (though not overly common), sixth sense, gone the way of the do-do bird? And what about possibly the most important sense of all, a sense of humor?
Yeah. Try to find that in your every day ramblings and rumblings. God forbid anyone be offended, or you take a potshot at someone, or chastise them all in the name of a little humor. What about a little self-effacing dig? Can you stand it? Will anyone realize you’re trying for a laugh when you smile and denigrate yourself in some fashion: “I sucked,” or “Yeah, I kicked ass” when everyone knows you didn’t.
Take a look at TV and movies lately. Since COVID, I would wager there are a lot fewer comedy shows and movies being made. We lost our sense of humor. The only really good comedy shows I can find out there are old re-runs of syndicated classics. Most of them are based on poking fun at ourselves, irreverently highlighting rude or immature behavior, or biting stereotypes. All this Woke nonsense (there’s another sense for you) has made everything taboo. Oh, no, let’s not dare to hurt someone’s feelings for the sake of a laugh. Laughing like that can’t be good for you. Say’s who?
Look, there are plenty of ways and jokes to tell that get a laugh without being cruel. There’s no need to be cruel. But then, there’s a long ways and a lot of room between poking fun, teasing, laying out a good cut and being flat out nasty and cruel. So, if we’re going to be that sensitive, why don’t we just zip our mouths shut and cease talking?
That’s the wrong kind of sense. How about being rational? We can still enjoy a good joke at someone else’s expense. It can and should be done. It keeps us in equilibrium, let’s us know people don’t see us as perfect, don’t expect us to be perfect, and tells us we need to get off our high horses, exercise a little humility and keep trying to be better people. It’s a good, generally harmless ego check – unless, of course, you have no room to take criticism, even in the truthful setting of humor.
Lacking a sense of humor makes us less tolerant and more irrational than we already are. By now, we should have figured out it’s not working! Where’s that horse sense I spoke of earlier?
Humor and laughter offer a valuable emotional reset. They help you relax, see the world in a more pragmatic fashion, and allow you to believe everything will be okay. And the reality is most things will be okay.
So let’s get our clown hats on, stop watching that ridiculous “reality-tv” and its fabricated dramas, turn the channel from all those cop and crime stories and reset ourselves to something that builds our tolerance for life’s imperfections, that helps us understand the foibles of others, and allows us to look constructively inward. Rather than all this destructive thinking, let’s use humor to help us reset and build ourselves into something better, someone who others can look to as an example of balance, rationality, and good sense.
Because we need our senses. Especially the ones beyond the five we are given. Let’s start with regaining our sense of humor. You’ll be surprised how many people won’t be offended.
