Laugh, and the World Laughs With You Assignment, Essay Example

There are very few people in the world that can say that they lead a carefree life.  Buddhism teaches that life is suffering, and in varying forms – whether it’s deciding on what to wear to the big dance to deciding what to give up in order to save the family home – our lives are full of problems that can sometimes seem unbearable.  Throughout time, one of the most universal ways to deal with distress has been humor.  Comedy helps us remember that our problems are rarely are own. When we laugh at one another, we usually laugh at the familiarity our conflicts have with one another, and we are relieved that not only are we not alone in our suffering, but those problems have solutions.  I am a funny person because I look to avoid those conflicts as often as possible, and once I create humor the big scary demons in life don’t seem so invincible after all.

My feelings about humor come from my family life.  I was raised in what many people call “a broken home.”  My parents split when I was six, and fortunately they decided to make the transition easy for my sister and I by keeping us away from their arguing and divorce proceedings.  During the week I lived with my mother, where the meals were from the kitchen, homework was done at the table and bedtime was 9PM.  But when Friday came it was time to pack my bag and go to Dad’s house, where we ate McDonald’s, played at the park until dark, and made pallets of blankets and pillows on the living room floor so that I could be up bright and early for Saturday morning cartoons.  My Dad and I would sit in our PJ’s on the floor and eat cereal while laughing at the TV, having the best time.  Those weekends with my dad were always associated with fun, and soon I forgot about how hard it was to see him pack and leave our house.  Looking forward to our time together every week helped me mentally separate Mom time and Dad time, and instead of thinking of them as split up, I realized that I now had two homes (and later that year two Christmases, which is any kid’s fantasy!).  Although there was nothing funny about our family changing, it was necessary, and the humor and fun I found in those weekends made the change easier. Out of habit, I still find myself getting up early on Saturday mornings in a good mood, although now I spend them catching up on reading or just being alone and watching TV, remembering my dad’s joking about cartoons not being nearly as funny as they were when he was a kid.  I associated humor with just about any problem after that.  The bullies who picked on me for being a “nerd” would hear jokes I heard from sneaking and watching late night comedians.  When I moved to a new school, I would become the class clown so that I’d have friends at recess.  At my Grandmother’s wake, I talked about how much she made me laugh, while others just mentioned how much they were going to miss her.  I think that without the lesson of comedy, I wouldn’t have been able to stop sadness from taking over.  So far in life, I have learned that the best way for us to keep on going is to simply smile and push through. Since that is easier said than done, I do my best to share what I know by giving a little hug, a joke, and a reminder to them that we aren’t alone with our problems.  And laughter is the language in which we spread that message.