Everyday Canvas

Sense of Humor

Prompt: “A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."
William James
What do you make of this quote?

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Common sense is something that arises from wisdom. Wisdom is giving each thing, event, or feeling its reasonable place in life. Humor helps this process flow more smoothly.

When we meet challenges with a sense of humor, we are better able to see new possibilities and options. Otherwise, we would run the risk of seeing the darker or grayer areas in everything.

As an example, why do people dance in weddings? A wedding, in its essence, is the celebration of a serious affair, a marriage, which is two people tying up the knot or rather themselves to each other for the rest of their lives. When you think of the repercussions of the seriousness involved here, nobody would dare get married, but the fun part of it, the wedding, makes this very serious idea easier to handle. The wedding and the dancing emphasize the good-work or good-relationship idea in the serious business of marriage through fun and laughter.

A sense of humor has the same spirit-lifting and lightening effect on wisdom and its offspring, common sense.