And the Greatest of These is Hop (A Somewhat Meandering Post)

Right now, Star Wars fervor is pretty high, and for good reason. Star Trek fandom is also huge, again for good reason. While I deeply enjoy both of those things, I haven't seen every episode, movie, or read the books. I can't answer all the trivia questions or tell you the name of every member of the band in the Cantina. I'm okay with that, really. For whatever reason--and I have some guesses--neither fandom has ever connected for me on a soul-deep level as they same to do with others.

But my love for Red Dwarf runs pretty deep. I've seen every episode multiple times. I own all of the seasons except for the last one, which I need to get, really. I've even read the books. Yes, there are books.

Star Trek, Star Wars, and Red Dwarf do share some common ground. Space, future, terrible tragedy and loss and hope in the face of insurmountable odds. They just handle them differently. While the first two have occasional humor, the third one solidly relies on it.

I have also solidly relied on it. Tragedy, horror, pain--comedy can change how your brain interprets these things. It can lighten the load. Ease the burden you're carrying. A great deal of this relies on how you train yourself to look at things.

At some point I realized that what I ingest--books, movies, TV, music--greatly influences my mood and I learned to be a little more selective. I need some levity in my horror, my drama, to cope. Beyond easing the pain, humor can take some power back from the horrors of life. Things simply aren't as scary or terrible if you can laugh at them. Humor, essentially, reminds you that things aren't as terrible as they seem. It's reminds you that there is hope.

I have, in the past, taught a humor writing workshop for teens. It's something I've grealy enjoyed doing and the teens appear to have a lot of fun as well. There is a great deal of shouting and giggling, at any rate. What kills me, though, is there's always a kid who asks me, "What if I'm not funny?" It's a crushing question to hear. Because I don't doubt for a second that the potential write in a humorous manner is there. Like any other kind of writing, it has to be honed. I'm funny because I was a weird kid who memorized stand up routines and funny lines from movies. It helps that my family is also funny. Humor, as I mentioned, is our number one way to cope with things. The worse the situation gets, the funnier we are. I know, it's weird.

The thing is--and I tell those teens this--there are lots of ways to be funny. Humor is a varied and splendid thing...and not everyone is going to love what you're throwing down. Trust me. People tell me I'm not funny all the time in book reviews. 

But I always wonder about those kids that ask--is it that they aren't funny, or that they haven't been encouraged to work that muscle?

When I was about 17, I was in the car with a close friend, and we were talking about the future. I told him I wanted to be a writer or maybe a comedian. He turned to me and said, "But you're not funny." I was shocked. We'd been friends for years and he didn't think I was funny. At all. Funny, at that point, was all I had. I was awkward, weird, and angry. I read too much and didn't understand my peer group at all. Humor was perhaps the only tool at which I excellend and it hurt to have someone tell me I was wrong.

So I thought about it. Really conisdered his words. He was a smart, insightful fella and I owe him a lot. But I decided that this one time, he was wrong, at least partially. I was funny--just perhaps not funny to him.

The other person was a close member of my family who, to this day, likes to tell me I have no sense of humor. 

I get paid to write funny books. Agree to disagree, dude.

What I'm getting at, with all of my meandering, is that humor, while often discounted and sneered at, has tremendous power. This year has been rough for many. The coming year promises to be follow suit. I hope it doesn't. I really do. I hope all of you out there have the best year EVER. But in case you don't, get funny. Be silly. Laugh. It's amazingly good for you. Don't have the energy to make yourself laugh? Watch a funny movie. Read a funny book. Spend time with a friend that really gets you and can help you see skip the "this will be funny later" time period and get to that shit now.

Take your power back, because those terrible things don't deserve to have it.

PS The title of this post if from an episode of Red Dwarf where Rimmer tells the crew that his family were Seventh Day Advent Hoppists due to a printing error in thier family bible which stated that "And now these three remain: Faith, Hop and Charity. But the greatest of these is Hop". So his family hopped everywhere on Sundays.