I like to think of myself as a positive person yet in talking to someone last night, I realized that my joking and sarcasm might be perceived as being negative. Hmmm. It is quite possible that I'm not the closet comedian I thought I was, that my attempt at humor may actually be making people think of me as a negative person which I try so hard not to be.
I was called impatient. My response to that was jokingly to say, 'well I am an Aries,' but that did make me think a little and back peddle to explain why I was making negative comments. Personally I think I use humor to soften the blow of life, to sugar coat situations, even if only to myself but maybe that is perceived to be something quite different by others, something negative. Am I really sounding negative when I crack these jokes or add a humorous spin to stupid situations? I must dive deeper into that.
About 14 years ago I worked with an older gentleman from Minnesota. He was quite the character with his accent, fair skin, jet black hair, and sinister smile that would always make you wonder what he was up to. He was a family man with several children and grand children who he talked about quite a lot. When I heard him talk, I could do nothing but smile and chuckle at his little stories which always had a sarcastic spin about them, even if they were not so nice. One thing I remember so vividly is that every morning when I greeted him and asked how he was doing that day, he would respond with, 'fair to partly cloudy.' The first time I heard that, I thought to myself that was a negative way to respond. Are you always expecting a storm?
After getting to know him, realizing that he was a joker, it made more sense, but at first it was a bit off-putting. I hadn't thought about that much in the recent years but now I have to wonder. Am I coming of with a hint of negative right off the bat too? I sure hope not but am I? When I answer someone's 'how are you doing' question with a 'better than yesterday' am I saying I am good or am I really saying yesterday was bad? When I am driving and talking about the drivers around me who are creeping along at a snails pace am I being negative? Yea, sometimes they do drive me nuts which is why I thought I was cracking jokes. Are they not as funny as I thought?
Joking has always been sort of a safety mechanism to my world. As a child, there were a lot of things that should not have been happening to me (that is another subject entirely and I will not dive into that here...probably never will). To safe-guard my psyche, when I would talk about them I would crack some joke to make it seem not as bad as it really was. It made the pill a bit easier to swallow, or so I thought. Don't they say laughter is the best medicine?
Trying to find the lighter side, even if only by saying something silly or becoming the butt of my own joke to ease the sting of the experience just something I did, even if just to make myself feel better. Maybe it wasn't working as I thought. Maybe it was actually doing the opposite of what I was intending to do. Was I actually talking about the negative and not finding the positive as I thought? Was I thinking I was talking about the silver lining on the storm cloud but instead bring more attention to the storm itself? I know I have a dry sense of humor but maybe I need to water it a bit.Goal: Water my sense of humor so it doesn't feel quite as much like Death Valley.
Just funny, you are always just funny
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