Don Quixote del la Mancha – the archetypal absurd hero
HUMORESQUE
My bad mood transforms into humour when it becomes aware of
itself.* When my mood becomes conscious of itself I can’t help seeing the funny
side of it. I am a little bit absurd. A sense of humour dissolves my serious
self-regard. As the ancient meaning suggests, humour is moist. A sense of
humour softens my rigidity with amusement – I laugh at myself. The self
importance, the posturing and domination of my mood becomes ludicrous.
Googling ‘laughing at
funerals’ produces about 8 million hits. Apparently it’s a distressingly
common experience. There are many theories about it: relief of tension,
hysteria, denial of the loss etc. My theory is that perhaps it serves the same
function that all humour does – it blows a hole in seriousness. Funerals become
ridiculous.
I did Classics at
university and I remember a special tutorial where we spent a whole afternoon
reading aloud, in turns, from Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. The Greek heroes of the story have monstrously overblown
egos; and, in the battle scenes, the gods take sides and urge the heroes on. Great
deeds and displays of courage are graphically rendered with bodies sliced and chopped
in combat, urged on by the gods of Olympus. Real blood and guts with cosmically
momentous consequences. Towards the end of these tutorial readings I remember
one student got the giggles. Very soon the whole class went to pieces. Overblown
heroic egos are idiotically funny. Not quite what the great classic of western
literature was meant to inspire.
When, like don Quixote, I take my heroic suffering seriously,
I’m already in deep trouble. So the
whole question is how to change a serious mood into a humour. I wont do it by
trying to understand it. I have no real rationale for my mood. I should never
try to explain it. To do so would be to reveal my absurdity without it being
funny. Explanations are a bottomless pit. You can never reach the end. Oh yes,
I was certainly angry as a child because things weren’t right. But there must
be a reason why I have held on to this feeling for so long. Why would that be? Understanding
always needs something else to explain the last term explained. In getting a
hold of myself, ‘understanding’ is the wrong tool. The closest I get to myself is getting what
my mood is like.
Seems strange to suggest that I can be ignorant of what my
mood is like. I mean ‘like’ not in the analogical, comparative, form of the
expression, (i.e. similar to), but the experiential form, as in “no one knows
what it is like to be me”. In this latter sense it can be true that I do not
know what my mood is like. I have never really experience it. I have been it, but I have never experienced it.
To change a mood into a humour is to grasp what the mood is
like; and the most useful way of doing this is what we know in person-centred
therapy as ‘reflection’. If I can reflect another’s mood, if I can
imaginatively enter into it, if I can show the other person I know what his
mood must be like, what it must feel like, what its implications are – then,
when he sees his reflection, he can begin to grasp what it is like himself. In the
earlier days of counselling ‘reflection’ was done verbally and this is still the
most useful. But I have learned many times over the years that it can be enough
to imaginatively grasp what it must be like for the other person. Nothing is
said, yet somehow telepathically they get it. So often I have been a silent
reflector and it has worked. Or perhaps
it’s that if I really get what their mood is like, whatever comes out of my
mouth is an accurate reflection.
That’s in therapy, but how do you turn your own mood into a
humour on your own? Very tricky! How do you get what your own mood is like?
Obviously by self-reflection. When you ask yourself, ‘what’s the matter with me’, you can get it for a flash – grasping your
mood by the tail, actually experiencing it, before it slithers away. There I am … swishhhh. I get what its
like before the recognition slips through the floorboards. I have to be real
quick.
What do you do when you’ve got it?
Well, nothing. Getting what its like is all you need.
The recognition is instantaneous – then gone.
Do that a couple of times and you’ll be in a better humour.
*
I realise I am redefining ‘humour’, coming from
from medieval physiology: i.e. the four humours
or body fluids. But I am also using the
other meaning
of ‘humour’, i.e. a funny or amusing quality
contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz
(03) 981 2264
