If you have been a serious sack cloth of a sorry head, you can shed this and begin to look at sunny side of life. It is not necessary to be a wit of fame.
What you need is a serious look at silly (read lighter) things and situations!
Lesson one. Look at your own self. You are the funniest thing that happened to the world. If you have some outlook on life, little will look funny to you. You have to jerk yourself and say to yourself, “Man, take off these shirkers. See around. People are laughing. Why?”
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Then, you will see and realize that there is a lot to laugh at and within the world. Be mentally alert. Look for the absurd. You will be amply rewarded. A fashionable woman goes to a shoe shop. The salesman tries his best to please her fastidious ladyship but she is snooty. He brings out a matchless pair and impresses her with, “Madam, this is an excellent pair for street walking.” She bought the pair!
Seek the company of the jocular. Notice what he or she finds funny. You will hear his/her funny things, which, you can apply yourself. The game goes on. Be merry. Different kinds of humour appeal to different people. What is funny to me may not be funny to you. It may even be fun in bad taste to yet another.
One reason for this is difference in background and vocabulary. One tells a joke or a story with animals as backdrop to a person who is totally ignorant of rural life. This will fall flat on the hearer. Give a good look to jokes and cartoons in newspapers and major ones you regularly read. Why are they funny? What’s the humour in them?
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Study carefully and you will find that one character (or even the animal) is shown doing something out of the ordinary. That’s extradionary! Call it absurd. Ridiculous. What you will. But it is humourous.
You will find very ordinary situations exaggerated to absurd limits that they read funny. “I shouted a I-love- you message to my beloved in winter. But it got frozen. It has melted in spring. I am waiting.”
Late Jawaharlal Nehru, sitting next to his then Defense Minister, found him helping too generously on chicken pieces at a dinner, looked at him and observed, ” Take it easy. They will not fly away. They are dead.”
Mr. Nehru had a sense of humour, which endeared him to other people who came in contact with him. A sense of humour is a desirable quality. It increases the status of the one who has it. It makes him “wanted” in any company.
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People at social gatherings want them. Shekhar Suman is wanted at any gathering much more than at TV shows. Why? He is able to laugh, makes others laugh, and creates a laugh “club” where everybody laughs.
He sees humour in situations in everything that Laloo Prasad Yadav does, says and practices. The same things, which would turn into sad or bickering, or irritations or pin pricks. He cuts on the Biological principle, “A merry heart doeth good like medicine.” It works both ways. It makes people feel good to be with others who can laugh heartily or with effortless ease. It also does a lot of good to one who is laughing.
It follows that a person who spreads cheers and mirth is the most welcome to others, as he is to himself. Everybody does not have a sense of humour. Some people cannot understand the point of a joke. They can neither laugh at themselves nor at the silliness of his story.
They see only either the serious or the seamier side of life. They lack zest for living. They can avoid a great deal of load of life if they can unload it with some good fun.
When you have a look at this stuff, look for bits and pieces of humour that you think make good gags or contributions to day to day conversation, which brings you applause. You get the focus in a group. Broadly speaking, humour is of two kinds. The first is clever, kindly and funny.
The other is clever, kind but hurtful. Most humour in social get-together is hurtful. The aim is to ridicule, to slight, to undermine, to score a point. Anything, not being funny or humorous!
There are two ways to look at this. One, you are ridiculed in a group. You laugh with those who ridicule you. Sporting? You scowl. Either retaliate or walk out from the “social” group. Humorless?
When others make fun you see red. It is a call you can take to be a good sport. What makes that difference? It is not the people doing it. It is the way it is done. Humour is also linked to tact and sensibility of others. This is unfunny to call a lame a “langra”, a squint-eyed a “kana”, because he is sensitive to it and it hurts him.
A sense of humour involves you to do or say something to a person yet make one feel he is a good, okay, fine, acceptable and nice in a group. They like to be teased, if it is right. It is humorous. It is pleasing. It is complimentary in a way and a girl may fall in love with the teaser.
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan admitted that she agreed to marry Zardari because he often teased her at family gatherings and made her laugh.
Use humour wisely. You may win a beautiful woman. Or a Prime Minister of a country in the bargain.