There is laughter in the aftermath of our disappointments. Not always, not immediately, but often.
Seek, and ye shall find. Indeed, it will sometimes come to you unsought and unrequested. I will tell you how.
I do not offer this as an optimist or pessimist. I try to be a realist who treated or evaluated approximately 3000 patients. They were either in therapy with me or with psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and other counselors who wanted my opinion about their clients.
I helped them find the best way forward.
Start here. If you choose it, your task involves recollection and some writing, too.
Consider making a list—any time you want. Remember your youthful embarrassments—the ones in front of a crowd or someone desirable. Add other teenage failures and disappointments, like being “stood up” when your date didn’t alert you to his upcoming absence.
Throw in poor test results and class presentations that found your voice quivering, your face red, and your sweat filling buckets, or so it seemed.
Write each disappointment down.
I know this essay is about overcoming, laughing, and bouncing back. Stay with me.
Recall a teacher who humiliated you, a parent who said things to friends he promised to keep secret. Include your worst first date or a disappointing marriage and divorce. Remember painful physical injuries and illnesses, too.
You will do something with this towering column of written memories, about which I shall say more, but not quite yet.
Think and write about all the movies that brought tears of identification with a character whose life was bested by events. Add to your list the unhappiness you experienced yourself.
Adults have all attended wakes, visitations, and Shivas or will attend them in the future. In the Jewish tradition, a Shiva is seven days of mourning the loss of someone dear.
These rituals are times of grave sadness and, paradoxically, a place where people laugh, sometimes both at once. The laughter is caused by funny incidents involving the deceased that someone witnessed or heard about. Such ceremonies always trigger storytelling.
I have written a private book of memories for my children and grandchildren. It includes some advice for the time after I’m gone, which I am not aiming for any time soon.
They won’t need my suggestions, but my words encourage them to laugh as they look back at me, the man who is now their loving dad or grandfather. We all have quirks; they will grin at some of mine. That is as it should be.
Now for what you’ve been waiting for.
The 20th-century comedian, Steve Allen, said this:
When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic (drunkenness, overweight, financial problems, accidents, etc.) he said, ‘Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment?’ The answer is ‘No,’ but they will be pretty soon.
Man jokes about the things that depress him, but he usually waits till a certain amount of time has passed. It must have been a tragedy when Judge Crater disappeared, but everybody jokes about it now. I guess you can make a mathematical formula out of it. Tragedy plus time equals comedy.
No one should minimize anyone else’s losses. For some, recovery requires a miracle. Yet Allen understood that a healing quality exists in the quiet worker we call TIME, like the sands that blow across the centuries and efface the evidence of glorious works and irreplaceable people.
We need distance and mourning to overcome any well-lived life’s inevitable defeats and departures. Even so, before or after funerals, many cannot help but laugh or smile as they recollect the precious one who is gone.
If you create the list I suggested you write, saving the file or putting a hard copy in a drawer is best. Do revisit it on occasion.
The catalog you create might be helpful when life gets the best of you—at work, play, love, or loneliness. Or perhaps when your health is troubled, aging depresses you, unwished things happen to friendships, or money becomes a problem.
Add anything you wish.
I hope the items you wrote remind you of when you experienced your world collapse and believed you would never enjoy a single moment ahead.
Yet, all of you survived and discovered the means and reasons to do so. They remain within you.
Our nature is to rebound and return to the game. Though we take life on with desperate seriousness, laughter and resilience come when we realize our small place in the scheme of things. It helps.
Prospero said in Shakespeare’s The Tempest,
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep…”
Laugh every chance you get.
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The first image is a Laughing Buddha Icon by Last of All Life and sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The Join Cubs Anonymous t-shirt comes from Cubs Anonymous. A Tom and Jerry Wall Painting follows it. Finally, a Little Buddha, which can be purchased here: Ceramic Buddha. I have no connection with either of these companies nor do I receive any compensation from them.
we are survivors by nature, we don’t always give ourselves credit for that
Exactly right, Beth. Our ancestors often found a way, and improvements in public health made a big difference. Enjoy, Sunday, Beth, and thank you for your always thoughtful commentary.
“They remain with you”…those moments of levity and loss. I love that you’ve captured quirks and stories for your family…to prompt grins, just as you said. So it should be. I’ve found self-deprecating humor to be the very best reminder of my own humanity. And I love your invitation and encouragement to write and chronicle these…along with the nudge to read and remember. “Our nature is to rebound and return to the game.” Agree, agree! Thank you, Dr. Stein. 💕
You have hit the target, Vicki. Mortality, even the humor of it, is a topic that is uncomfortable for most of us to contemplate or discuss. Yet, philosopher’s like the Stoics had it in mind and wrote about it regularly. So did Camus, who asked us to imagine Sisyphus happy, even as he rolled the ball up the hill, only to have it roll back down — his endless punishment.
Perhaps the way to live is to have eyes forward with hope, eagerness, love, laughter and kindness while still recognizing that there is also a rearview mirror for us to check on, the better to live with intensity, make the best use of the time, and thrive.
Oh my goodness…”eyes forward with hope, eagerness, love and kindness” with a peek into the rearview mirror. I love all of that. Thank you, again! 💕
Ah, I have a long list. Thank you for this very helpful exercise, Dr. Stein. I was struck by your sentence, “Our nature is to rebound and return to the game. “
I heard a question this past week that went nicely with this exercise. When things get tough, ask yourself whether it’s a tragedy or inconvenience?
Thanks for giving us perspective and the reminder to laugh!
Much appreciated, Wynne. In training to be a counselor, one learns how and when to reframe an idea or a perspective. That’s just what the question of tragedy or inconvenience can do. Keep your bounce. As basketball fans know, rebounds help win games. They give us second chances.
I think this post should go in the Dr. Stein Blog Hall of Fame, especially in light of your previous Heartbreak essay. While we may not always be able to laugh at such memories, we can learn and grow from them as time shifts the event into different light.
As writers, our humiliations, losses, faux pas, setbacks, and disappointments can be the engine of great stories—both fiction and true. The humiliations I experienced as a child from a classroom teacher appears as a scene one of my published short stories. There is a well-known adage in fiction writing: Don’t go easy on your characters!
I’m going to borrow your list-making idea for my writing workshop as inspiration for crafting a compelling narrative. The best part of creating stories, I think, unlike in real life, is that you get to revise the ending, again and again, until it feels just right.
Thank you, Evelyn. Better the Hall of Fame than the Hall of Shame. It happens that I had an article published in a sports magazine about Hall of Shame candidates who had played for the Chicago Cubs and White Sox.
Thanks for reading the Heartbreak essay, too. I am pleased to hear you will put the list-making idea to a good use.
I would add, the “Don’t go easy on your characters” admonition, just might have a few applications in life. Something to think about. Revising endings, too.
Beautiful insights, Dr. Stein, as always. I love the formula: “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” I came across this exercise in my early 20s and it felt humiliating to even think about those old mistakes. I’m going to carve out some time this week for the exercise — I bet I’ll now be able to laugh at some of those old pain points and view them as fun little quirks accidents, rather than flaw and tragedies.
I should say the long, mold-generated illness from which you suffered should create more perspective than would be needed in most lifetimes. I am happy you have turned an impossible corner. I doubt I could have done it myself.
I think we’re all capable of more than we realize, when put to the test. I look back on the young woman I was a decade ago and share similar doubts about myself. At least in my case, I think it helped tremendously to have a loving and supportive partner in life.
Dr. Stein, thanks for this important reminder to laugh every chance I get 🙂 As to that list you propose, I would say that there’s no end of embarrassments at every age 🙂
I hope you are at the end of the embarrassment, Rosaliene. I have reached the age of being past almost all of them, so there is reason to hope. And retirement improves one’s odds!
Aging comes with its own embarrassing incidents 😀
I suppose you are right, Rosaliene. I am learning how not to care.
When we go through our trials and difficulties, it can feel so encompassing we can’t imagine ever being able to feel better again, but it does happen, as you said, with enough time. There are some things we cannot look back on with humor, but at least we know we have come through and survived it. Some find their mission in life because of the tragedy they went through, and some work hard to make something wonderful out of their life because they feel they were spared for a reason. On the other hand, there remain those who have been so damaged and scarred from what they went through they are barely able to function.
We live in a world where therapy of so many types exist and healing is possible, but we need to be open to it. Thanks for reminding people that it is possible.
You have said it so well, Tamara, that I have little to add, except to thank you for describing this and a bow to your own remarkable path toward a better life, one devoted to helping others.
Thank you Dr. Stein! I never thought I’d get to where I am now, but it was through baby steps. Teeny-tiny steps that it didn’t feel like there was anything happening, and indeed, I tried giving up many times, but got up to take another teeny-tiny step.
That’s what I encourage other to do when they feel so overwhelmed and overcome with their emotions. Tiny steps!
As they say, you are “paying it forward.”
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