Finding my funny

I feel like I’ve lost my funny somewhere, and I’m trying to find it.

I mean, funny isn’t like a cheap pair of readers I can run to the dollar store and replace the same day. Losing my funny feels more like losing my left hand - the one I write with - and I haven’t found a dollar store or even a Sharper Image catalog yet that has one of those.

I shouldn’t be surprised because I’ve found that fear, worry, isolation and sadness tend to cause my funny to want to pick up its toys and leave. And I haven’t had to look far to find those things in the past few months ... most of us haven’t.

After almost a year of the deadliest pandemic of my lifetime watching friends and family both testing positive and some passing away from Covid, followed by political strife that is turning friends and family against one another in front of my very eyes, and followed again by the most significant and horrific political event I hope I ever see in my lifetime - an attempted coup on our nation’s Capitol last week - well, I’m not surprised my funny packed it’s crap.

I realized by Thursday morning that my funny had gone to the store for bread and a pack of smokes and failed to return home. I didn’t call the cops, because I can’t hold my funny hostage. I’ve lost it before and it usually shows back up eventually.

But I need it back sooner this time - things feel more urgent now, so I’ve been looking.

My first pro tip to finding your funny again has always been to not go to social media. I repeat, you will not find your funny on social media. Pinterest, maybe, and Instagram if you do it wrong like I do, would be the two exceptions.

Except I found this tidbit on Twitter at 3 a.m. on Friday night.

A random, non-famous lady I follow Tweeted:

“I just told my daughter pink lemonade was the elixir of happiness.

She said, ‘I think other people’s laughter is the elixir of happiness.”’

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night thinking of the profound wisdom of that child, and her parents to even teach her about alchemy.

So I wouldn’t ruin my unexpected high, I logged out of Twitter after reading that and decided finding that elixir of happiness is what I need to do, especially now. Other people’s laughter, as much as my own, sustains me. It is my drug of choice and my anti-depressant.

I didn’t find my funny on Twitter, but it was a good compass. I’m still looking.

Spread goodness, y’all, as well as Grace, love, laughter, and funny - that elixir of happiness - and it will find you and me in the midst of everything that tells us the opposite.