Arriving at university, a place where I heard to be accepting of differences from my teachers and college websites, I looked forward to sharing and exploring my true self with my peers at Emory. However, during my limited time here, I feel as if something is missing.
People ask each other: “How is your day going?” Others respond: “I am good. What about you?” Those responses almost become a pattern. After a while, I begin to smell the mendacity in those repeated and formulated responses. They come from courtesy and fear of not being accepted socially. I wonder what stops students from simply saying how their days really went or being their authentic selves in front of their peers in such a “diverse and inclusive” space. I later realized that the lost sense of humor and being bonded to imperfections and judgments can explain the contradictory narrative about accepting one’s authentic self.
Before discussing the relationship between humor and staying true to oneself, I want to conceptualize humor first. Most people sense humor through words: when they hear something funny, they laugh. However, I perceive humor rather as a state of mind, a point of view and a way of approaching a stress-free life. In the classic book “My Country and My People,” Yutang Lin, the first person who brought the word “humor” into the Chinese lexicon, wrote that humorists are born out of realism and humility. Humorists can perceive their imperfections, futility and smallness in the world. A humorist is nothing but intellect slashing at itself. Instead of feeling insecure about their awkwardness and failures, they confidently sound their shortcomings, delighting in sharing their imperfections with others. Instead of condemning the vices in themselves, others and the world, they laugh at them, tolerate them and grow out of them. If people have the characteristics I mentioned above, they are considered to be humorous. In contrast, people who are too serious about and fear to share their imperfections with the public are not humorous.
Unfortunately, it is becoming more difficult for younger generations to obtain that sense of humor and accept who they really are. We have developed a cultural consensus that those who have high self-esteem should be rewarded by the system instead of those who recognize, laugh at and grow out of their shortcomings in public (in other words, humorists). According to Timothy Keller, an American theologian, pride is the implicit driving force behind that culture. Contemporary education, for example, is one of those systems that can confirm it. Colleges admit those who acquire more leadership roles at a school, more academic rewards and better grades. In such a competitive environment, students delight in becoming prominent figures in their schools.To obtain that pride and pleasure, they can only present their flawless images of themselves on their college applications or during any public display instead of true bruised images. They must hide away from the scenarios that require publicly reflecting on things they need to improve upon or their genuine selves, the very process of becoming a humorist. Therefore, pride takes away students’ opportunities to obtain a sense of humor since they are too invested in being supposedly perfect instead of facing their true selves.
I consciously avoided the chance to practice humor as well. During high school, I felt like I could not be inferior to my peers competing for the limited spots in university admissions. That is when pride creeps in. It motivated me to spend most of my time doing activities, such as math competitions, that will only help me build a well-rounded perfect activity list but have no contribution to exploring and finding my true self. I also missed all the opportunities of becoming a humorist by turning away at the first sign of imperfection. For example, I stopped practicing tennis after getting cut from the team during high school. My ego did not let me take another chance to become a better player but forced me to drop my favorite sport even if it has been a major part of my life and carries part of my true identity simply because I am not “perfect” anymore. And that is not living humorously.
Pride and lack of humor persist after students enter college. Only a month into the fall semester of freshman year, my roommate told me this friend or that friend at Emory got this or that summer internship. It is good to be motivated, but all I can hear is anxiety and even despair in his voice especially when he talked about his fear of not being able to stand confidently next to his peers just because he just got rejected by some prestigious job. Again, an unhealthy amount of pride stole the humor not just from him and many others at Emory.
Students hide those fears and anxieties so well and are so afraid to talk about them with a light voice. Despite my roommate dealing with an overwhelming amount of stress, he started to post pictures of his vacation with that perfect smile a second later. All of sudden, he made even the slightest trace of anxiety disappear. However, he sacrifices the chance to recognize and laugh about his anxiety because he perceives the public display of struggles as weakness and not perfect. He pretended that those true anxieties that are also part of him do not exist furthering the vicious cycle of losing humor.
Now, we must figure out how to relearn humor. The key to obtaining humor is humility. Conan O’Brien, a renowned talk show host, is one of the great humorists who demonstrates that quality. O’Brien constantly laughs at his shortcomings in front of millions of viewers on television and during interviews. When his guests make fun of him, he often laughs along. However, instead of denigrating himself for views, humility is the actual driving force behind his awkwardness and self-deprecating acts. Without humility and humor, O’Brien, a great intellect who dealt with non-laughing matters such as writing a paper titled “Literary Progeria in the Works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor,” would not even think of becoming a talk show host in the first place. After all, he recognizesthat approaching life with honesty and the ability to see his own imperfections allows him and others around him to accept who he really is with comfort and ease. O’Brien gets the joke of life
How do we gain that humility then? According to C.S. Lewis, one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, truehumility is “not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.” The freedom and lightness that come with self-forgetfulness are unimaginable. People who practice humility and self-forgetfulness stop connecting every experience, word or opinion of others to themselves. Criticism or failures do not devastate them — they take them lightly. People no longer are chained to grief. However, self-forgetfulness does not mean that people can just lay on their backs with all imperfections in themselves that they recognize. Now they should laugh at and delight in imperfections, criticisms and losses. However, humor comes with practices and intentionalities; otherwise, it would not have been at risk of disappearance in the first place. There is still a possibility though if you and I keep striving for it and reminding ourselves of it daily. Next time when your friends poke fun at your outfit, you should laugh along with them — maybe even louder than they do — and not feel embarrassed. By starting small, I believe that we all can find that lost humor in us.
Henry Xu (25C) is from Shanghai, China.
