Given the nature of my last post, I feel some responsibility to not abruptly go back to the mindless silliness I so enjoy writing about. I do know that there is a degree to which "this is my blog and I can do whatever I want," but there it just feels awkward to me to go straight from the sublime to the banal.Anyway, I was actually thinking about what the two have in common. What does a patient committing suicide have to do with dogs driving cars and monkeys drinking beer? Besides the fact that be-bopping back and forth is consistent with the title of this blog, I think there is some connection between the serious and silly. We need them both.
The serious things, such as the death of a patient or a tribute to my father, are what real life is made of. We have experiences, both hard and happy, which plow through the hard soil of our life and leave our emotions raw. We hurt and/or smile with them while they turn us over and leave us different for their intervention in our lives. We learn more from the hard stuff and need to spend time being thankful for the real good stuff. I don't think the goal is to escape the bad stuff, it is to experience them and harvest whatever fruit we can from them.
On the other hand, the silly stuff I so enjoy (and so have many of you) is the joy of life. We need to sit and smile. We need to be able to sit and laugh at what is funny in life. There are so many serious things that at times we feel we can't also laugh. There are inappropriate times to laugh - you don't giggle at a funeral - but I think we equally miss the boat when we hang on to the seriousness too long and don't see the joy - and there is much of that. I go from a room where a person is depressed and troubled to a room with a smiley 6-month old baby. Both are real life
and both bring different good things with them.I think it is a lot like the accelerator and brakes on a car. The humor is the accelerator - that which moves us and lifts us, while the difficult things are the brakes. You cannot have a car without either. A life lived in just laughter is shallow, while a life lived without it is pathetic. I choose to do both and see great reward in it.
It has been very satisfying to see so many new visitors here enjoying this blog. I will continue to move from topic to topic, digging out whatever humor or serious message I can from them. I hope I continue to entertain and make people laugh (that is what we class-clowns live for, don't you know), but I never want to appear to take life too lightly. Both are parts of life I would not want to do without.
