Latest / Wanzology / Sometimes, Ya Just Gotta Laugh
Transcript
- Ya Just Gotta Laugh Oh, yes sir, yes sir! Welcome! Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!!! I am your host, The Wanz welcoming you to another Wednesday, which isn't like last Wednesday, and God knows will not be like next Wednesday. That being said, how are you? I hope you and yours are well and you know you are excelling at this thing we call life. Today. I am contemplating what exactly to talk about. What earth shattering epiphany have I conjured in order to dazzle you with my spectacular deductive feats and whatnot. I got nothing. Yeah, every once in a while, I got absolutely nothing. You ever have that feeling that no matter how much time you spend preparing yourself mentally for something, you really don't have any gumption, any motivation, no real direction, no nothing. You ever have that? Some days are like that, and it's taken me a few hours conservatively to figure out what to do. I finally just had to laugh. Sometimes you just gotta laugh. It may seem like you're at a dead end. It may seem like nothing's happening. It may feel pointless. It may feel unnervingly, unpredictable, and those are the times when you just have to laugh. Why? Why laugh you say? Because the ironic thing is at that point where you feel betwixt in between is exactly the time you have the most power you will ever have in your life. Don't think so? When you are not doing anything, I'll bet you're thinking of doing something. You just can't decide what thing that something is going to be. Now, this is not complicated, even though it kind of sounds confusing. Well, let's put it this way, let's put this into context. One that anyone can understand. Say you have a bowl of jellybeans and there are yellow ones, there are red ones, there are green ones, and there are black ones. You like the green ones. I like the black ones. So if I eat all the black ones and you eat all the green ones, we're both left with two other colors that we really don't like, right? But if we eat the ones that we don't like first, both of us will be left with the ones that we really want. You see how that works? Some people may call it, uh, addition by subtraction. I'll give you another example. For years, I mean years, people have marveled over how I eat a Snickers bar, you know, the Snickers candy bar? I'm not a real big fan of chocolate, but I'll eat me a Snickers bar every once in a while. But I do it in a very interesting way because I don't like chocolate very much. I know, I'm strange, we've covered that before. I will nibble the chocolate off of the outside. First both sides, then the end and then the top. Leaving a thin layer of chocolate on the bottom. Nougat above that. caramel and peanuts above that. Some days I can't decide whether I like the nougat, or the caramel. Most times I split the difference. So if I've nibbled off all the chocolate on one half, I will then take the candy bar out of the wrapper and turn it around and then nibble the chocolate off of the other half of the candy bar. Then it becomes challenging. Which do I eat first? The caramel or the noot? Well, the genius in this nifty little plan is that it doesn't matter because I'm left with the two things that I like. I can't tell you how many times I've pondered, “Let's see, okay, now that all the chocolate's gone, what do I want to eat? Oh, I'll just eat the caramel, because the caramel has peanuts in it. Oh, we'll just eat the nougat because it's softer and it's sweet and Mmm!!” See, sometimes you just have to laugh. When you do, you take yourself into a place where worry disappears, fear disappears, confusion disappears. One of the greatest skills a human can develop is the ability to laugh at themselves. It shows great humility to be able to laugh at yourself, even though it may not feel very good, this circumstance that causes you to laugh at yourself, it's good to know that your humility is larger than your ego, and you don't take yourself too seriously. Like me in the candy bar. Like I said, there are more than a few people who think, man, that's weird. It might be, but it's what I like and we all get to decide those things that we like. We try to do more of those things that we like. Sometimes you just have to laugh. Stuck in traffic? Cars everywhere? You really wanna be wherever it is you're going, but you can't get there because all these other people are in your way. Another opportunity to laugh at it because this is a moment that you realize you have absolutely, positively no power. No power over any person, place or thing. So you can get mad that the traffic's not moving or that the person in front of you goes like four miles an hour and then puts on the break. Even though there are three car lengths behind the car in front of them, you just have to laugh, because you're in a circumstance where you have absolutely no control. Here's a backwards way of looking at that situation. You get to be in that situation. You are the one who gets to be in the car behind the car that can't seem to figure out that if they go to a really low speed and they're constantly moving, they're actually getting somewhere, rather than stopping, starting stopping, starting stopping and starting again. You got stuck behind that person. You can't laugh at that? You might find it extremely frustrating. I have also found it extremely frustrating, but I always end up laughing at it because I realized I have no control. I could bitch at it as much as I want. I can yell and scream at that driver, but they're in their car, I'm in mine, I'm pretty sure they don't hear me. And if they look in their rear view mirror and they see me losing my mind inside my car, I'm pretty sure they're not gonna care. So all that acting out is kind of pointless. And again, I have to laugh. A situation I have no control over has temporarily caused me to go insane. To me that's funny. And then I reel myself back in and change the station on the radio or do something else. That's it. Sometimes you have to laugh at the circumstance you're in. Now, there are other circumstances where you'll have control, and you can laugh at those as well because it's like, ha ha, ha, master of the universe, I'm making decisions that totally map out and navigate the pathway of my life. Ha ha, ha! But everything is temporary, so those moments are just as fleeting as the time that you have no control over anything. Ironic, isn't it? “It's astounding. Time is fleeting…madness takes control.” It's the first line of “(Let's Do) The Time Warp Again” from Rocky Horror Picture Show. But it's true, it is astounding! Time IS fleeting, madness CAN take control if you are not paying attention. Because I guarantee you, once you are paying attention and you realize the finite capability of you, it's easiest just to laugh knowing full well that that circumstance that you're in is not permanent. And everything is temporary, right? So if you're in a bad circumstance, that's not gonna last for long. If you are in a good circumstance, it's not gonna last for long. When you reach that perspective, the easiest thing to do is laugh at that perspective, like a tug of war that that has no winner, like playing tic-tac toe against yourself. You're not gonna lose against yourself on purpose, are you? Really? Nobody does that!! But the circumstance that you put yourself in, where your best idea is to play yourself in tic-tac-toe, that in and of itself is reason enough to at least giggle, at least find a little humor at the banality of that. Remember, your life is exactly as it appears. Your life is not what you want it to be, it's exactly as it appears. The question becomes what do you do with that information? What do you do with the information that comes in through your senses at any given moment in your life? What do you do with it? Well, if you go back a few minutes, you do exactly what you're doing right now. You evaluate what you can do, you evaluate what you did, and use that knowledge, that experience to do the next thing. Life always is just that simple, even though it seems extremely complicated. And these days with rising prices and bills to pay and maybe you're not working and maybe your children aren't behaving the way they should and maybe your significant other doesn't understand why you're laughing seemingly uncontrollably at nothing, right at this very moment, that moment that you realize sometimes you just have to laugh. You just gotta!! Take this. Discuss it with someone that you really care about. When you're caught in that position of, ‘I'm not really sure what's gonna happen’, ‘I'm not really sure what I'm going to do’, ‘I'm not really sure’, laugh. Talk about that laugh and see what you come up with. See what bubbles up from the depths of your subconscious. I guarantee you. An interesting discussion will come when you realize then have to explain to somebody else why you just gotta laugh. Take that with a grain of salt like everything else. I hope it all works out, and I hope that whoever you explain this concept too, gets it on at least the second time you explain it. I really appreciate you being here!! Thanks so much for tuning in and I will see you next week!!!