Laughter and the Meaning of Life

 The meaning of life is 42.  Thank you Douglas Adams, you died all too young.

I love to laugh.  My mom loved comedies as well.  In the movie theater she was almost always the first to laugh, and laughed the loudest.  She is a very intelligent woman, still around, just turned 90.  My wife says she enjoys going to the movies with me because of my laugher.  I guess I inherited something from my mother. 

My humor is a bit more edgy than my mother’s, or my wife’s.  I like a very broad range from “The Aristocrats” to all flavors of stand-up comedians.  I particularly like the humor of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, telling the truth about our society, and also making us laugh.   I wait each week for The Onion in paper form, and the Ironic Times online. 

The Hindus have a term, Lila, loosely translated as the creative play of the divine.  This relates to the view of the world from a distance.  From a distance the world is pretty funny.  Up close it can seem quite tragic.  When you take the 35,000-foot view, we are all little ants scurrying around.  When we take the 1,000-year view we can see how far we have come as a human society. 

My past psychotherapist called this climbing up to take in a larger view.  The Buddhists call this taking the view of the Witness. 

The process of personal evolution, moving to a higher stage of consciousness usually brings a sense of humor about the world.  The Dali Lama laughs a lot!  In your own process of growth it is helpful to be creative and also to take a bit of distance and sense of humor at your own attempts to evolve to a higher stage of consciousness. 

Yes, it important to be serious about the environment and human suffering.  We don’t have infinite energy or clean water.  Perhaps we will in the future, maybe if we don’t kill our species off with nuclear war, a plague, or chemical toxins. 

I believe that all creatures evolve because Source, Spirit, All-that-is, whatever you want to label the Universe, needs to appreciate itself.  We are the sensory organs of the Universe. 

Source split itself into “the 10,000 things,” really more like billions and billions of things, because it needs to hide from itself.  If it doesn’t hide from itself, it can’t view “the other.”  Who would be there to appreciate a sunset, a flower, music, art, baby animals, or the touch of a lover? 

Source needs to split itself apart, and hide from Itself, because, as Wilber says, it is no fun to have dinner alone.  Well usually it is not as much fun for most people, as you recall I am an introvert, I have lots of fun being alone!

Humans may well kill themselves off in a nuclear war or some other holocaust.  That might be tragic from my human point of view.  However, this is not a problem for Source, the radiation resistant cockroaches will then evolve to appreciate the universe.

So, always remember that we are the Sensory Organs of the Universe, protect our environment, but also go out there and laugh, and smell the roses.