The Humor That It Is

by Ron R. Lacson

They say that laughter is the best medicine.

I have 2 sets of questions relevant to this self-proclaimed renowned proverb. The first is: Why is it just a medicine? What if you’re not sick? Can you still get a dose of laughter and benefit from it? The next question is: Who are these They?  Who rolled out this catchphrase to the world?

From an introspective point of view, in our desire to have a less stressful life, laughter must be analogous to vitamins and minerals (and not drugs). It is what every fiber of our being needs so we can sustain our sanity and embrace our every chance to roar ha-ha-ha. It is an essential supply that has to be in our backpacks while we negotiate the arduous journey of life.  Laughter bestows vigour; it creates excitement. In miniature, I mean in short 😊, laughter is not the usual Panadol headache tablet; it is the Red Bull energy drink.

Life away from our home country can be challenging, and sometimes taxing (although many are still unfriendly to paying tax, this is actually not about tax, ok?). For many Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), the facile compromise that has been made between our sense of belonging / living in our own country and the yearning to work abroad for the purpose of earning more money, has already been far too common over the last 30 to 40 years. The Filipino diaspora is real. The occurrence of culture shock where the stages of its moral development vary for each individual OFW is real. And the need to elicit laughter from and register humor to every challenge that befalls us is also very real.

Hong Kong, for example, the place where I work, although kinder to many OFWs in comparison to  let’s say, the middle east, still has a plethora of everyday complicated situations that we can humor to lessen the tensions hitting our hearts. So, hear this; I mean read this. I met this lady who told me an intricate incident with her employer that almost cracked her head, and she humored it by telling me the story. Our conversation went like this (I’ll write it in English so all readers can comprehend):

“Kuya (brother), my employer was fixing his table and he asked me to give him a knife,” she said. I asked what she did afterwards. “I gave him a knife and he was kinda angry at me,” she replied. She then detailed to me their whole dialogue. Let’s call her Lady Gaga (alright, you must know it’s not her real name).

Lady Gaga: But sir, you said knife, so here’s the knife.

Employer: Oh my gosh, not that nayf, the othel nayf.

Lady Gaga: What othel, I mean other knife sir?

Employer: You know,  the one use for cut cut wood.

Lady Gaga: Cut cut wood?

Employer: Yes, the knife. COME TO YOU, COME TO ME, then again, COME TO YOU, COME TO ME.

Lady Gaga: hmmm… (thinking deeply) come to you, come to me; come to you, come to me. Oh, my goodness. sir! you mean ‘SAW’ (lagari), for cutting wood. (EUREKA)!!!

Dealing / conversing with people of different culture and language (and accent) entails patience and sometimes a bit of understanding about art. Oh yes, it’s an art; the art of humor and the art of being able to laugh at ourselves and to a difficult situation we are in.

Consider this story too. Not long ago, I was assigned to work in Vietnam for a length of time. Hanoi is a wonderful place but it’s a lonely dwelling for me. I felt so homesick and every morning when I wake up, I just wanted to leave and go home. I was terribly sad. The people were friendly but it was hard for me to understand their language and adapt to their food. One night, I was introduced by my colleague to one of the pastries they are proud of; the Vietnamese tart.

So, I bought a box of Vietnamese egg tart. My colleague SAHNG Tran then invited me for a cup of coffee at the bar of his FRIEND, whose name was SIZKOH Nguyen. When I got back to my small hotel, I realized that I forgot and left my TART. That inspired me to humor myself and sing:

I LEFT MY TART, IN SAHNG'S FRIEND SIZKOH.

I laughed at myself. I injected a comical aspect to my situation. It helped me survived the next many days of homesickness.

Humor is intrinsic in us. In every human brain, there is this switch that can trigger our ability to look at the funny side of an unglamorous episode in our life.  All we need to do is to turn it on. Humor the situation and I promise you; your heart will beat happier.

When my father passed away last month, after finally succumbing to his battle with cancer, it was a devastating moment for my family. He died in a hospital in US.  All of us – my siblings and me – were in California for the funeral. We cried and we missed our father so much. It was a difficult occasion for us but we had to move on with our lives. We all remember how the green line of the hospital Life Monitor machine (which showed the heart rate and other vital signs) went horizontally straight signaling that we already lost our Dad; that he was gone. Three days later, we happened to be talking about polygons; we humored ourselves when we saw a figure somewhere online that showed different polygons and one of them has a straight line that says patient-gon; which made us all laughed.

Again, humor worked.

I am not suggesting that we must force ourselves to laugh when we are really sad, nor put up a fake smile when we are really solving a particularly difficult life problem. The application of humor is never a coercion, it must be volitional and permissive; we only have to let it out when it’s ready. Don’t control it, even if sometimes what you are releasing is only funny to you, and not to others. Still laugh and enjoy, your heart will like it.

I was on a bus one Sunday going from Central to Tuen Mun. I was sitting beside a lady who seemed to be very unhappy and was moving unceasingly on her seat. My curiosity got the better of me and I just had to ask what’s wrong. She said she had to go back to her employer’s house because she forgot to clean the earth before she left; it was strictly and specifically tasked to her.

“Clean the earth? What earth!?” I asked. “Do you mean, the ground or the floor?” 

She rolled her eyes as if she was telling me that I know so little about the world.  “Kuya naman (Oh brother), earth is that blue round thing where you can see different yellow maps.”

Immediately, I already knew what she was referring to. I took my cell phone and googled an image, and then showed it to her.

“Is this the one?” I asked. 

“Yes, that’s the one.  It’s the earth, I need to clean it,” she replied proudly.

It’s actually a GLOBE. 😊 I was already laughing inside me, and I didn’t want to tell her anymore because it already made her day and mine. She can clean the whole earth if she really needed to. It’s another time of humor that energized both of us.

The earth, I mean the world of humor has no inclusivity. It encompasses every race and class; it circumscribes every situation at the right time; it fringes all disciplines and studies; it’s for us to wrap our arms around it and make it our possession. Imagine the earth without it, and it’s a lonely planet (ok, not that large travel guide book).

Live with humor and you will live with a passion to enjoy life; and often, a life of fulfillment and satisfaction. Laughter is the best vitamins and minerals. It is the humor that it is.

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