There are times I wonder what life would have really been like if we had no sense of humor and all we did was wake in the morning, go to tend the farms, trim the gardens, water the plants and return home to our families tired and exhausted, only to sleep off. Perhaps only if Eve had not spoken the snake language, we would have known by now.
What about living a life where all our words and phrases are monitored and scrutinized to make sure that it conforms with the laid down laws and principles of speech, where jokes are seen as slander and libel and humor is seen as a trait for fools? What would life have been like, knowing that your jawline has to be permanently affixed and square like a working German. And a relaxation of which is seen as a sign of folly.
Life perhaps would have been interesting, I don't know. Perhaps social media would have taken the same route as traditional media whose words and contents are sensored even when they're supposed to be the independent champions of free speech. But one thing is certain, humour is a very important aspect of our everyday lives.
Personally, I play a lot. Dare I say I joke a lot, sometimes even with important issues just to douse tension and create a calm atmosphere. Sometimes the level of humor that can be tolerated from an individual is a product of the friends they keep. I have very crazy and funny guys, who like me, do joke a lot. We can even turn a funeral into a comedy show.
One of them (a Dj), played "Last Last" by Burna Boy at someone's wedding reception and we all went to the front to dance to it. The groom was a jolly good fellow who understood the joke and just laughed it off.
That doesn't mean that we do it with everyone as people have their own different tastes in humour. I remember the last one that reminded me of that fact. It was with one of my female coursemates whom I play alot with. She usually just laughs me off as she knows that I'm usually a jolly good fellow who just 'plays' around.
That was up until I made an expensive joke that she took serious. I and her served at the same firm during our industrial attachment, along with another guy. So when we finished our IT and returned to school, she had emaciated. So one day we were just throwing random banter around and I made reference to her that "she used to follow the other guy home from IT, and that was why she emaciated".
She said nothing back and we all just laughed it off. Unknown to me that she had picked offense in the joke. Two weeks later she had to call me aside to pour her heart out angrily, telling me that she did not like what I said and that she's only telling me because she wanted to free her mind. I was shocked and all attempts to apologize fell on deaf ears as she stomped off angrily without giving me a listening ear.
A few hours later, I approached her again and apologized after the anger had seemingly subsided a little and she forgave me. It was quite dramatic and surprising because these are the kind of jokes we just laugh off within ourselves, but she took it serious.
That taught me a lesson about my manner of approach towards different individuals as what's funny to one might not be funny to others. That isn't just about me though, but to the generality of us. Jokes are an essential ingredient in life (as far as I'm concerned), but we also need to be careful not to abuse it. And we also need to take other people's feelings into consideration before making some kind of jokes. Selah!
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