The article circulating around the Singaporean Facebook today reads: Are too many Singaporeans expecting an easy life?
I'm linking this to humanity's celebrated capacity for humourous thought and banter. To make the link clearer, then we should ask: What is a Sense of Humour? A capacity to make jokes? Also, why do we joke?
My guess:
The sense of humour comes hand in hand with a hard life
To have a sense of humour is to be prepared for every eventuality.
To have a sense of humour is to be conscious of the fact that things can suddenly go very absurdly wrong.
To have a sense of humour is to probe the uncomfortable realities of pain and death.
To have a sense of humour is to stay strong and optimistic in the face of great odds.
My unorganised sources:
- Jamie & co. from the MythBusters has confirmed that, by swearing loudly while immersing one's hand into ice water, the pain is lessened. (Swearing is arguably a truncated stunted form of humour)
- Daniel Wong writes in the abovementioned article that by rejecting challenges, Singaporeans do themselves little favour by rejecting the opportunities that come with it.
- People from Finland are famously stereotypically taciturn and no-nonsense people, but nurture a discreet level of eccentricity which keeps the stress under control. I don't know about you; I think Finnish people and Singaporeans are very similar, except only that Singaporeans tend to release stress through ostentatious displays of negativity.
- Fr Alex of CSS speaks in his homily that the same thing that brings great joy to us also brings great sorrow. (which sounds contradictory, and so do many of the things we joke about)
- Fr Joe of Opus Dei reflects on Saturday: let us meditate today on the reality of death, heaven, hell and purgatory.
- In the army days, the darkest toughest hours (when the most random things were happening) were when that strange sense of humour grew on us and we actually began to enjoy, or at least accept, what we were doing.
- There's this thing called dark humour and it totally works.
