Embrace the absurd

We can’t always be serious. It’s vital to embrace the absurd sometimes or a lot of times. Reduce the world to an absurdity. When death lurks around the corner and that’s no hyperbole, we need to have some comic relief. If you’re always serious, that’s a recipe to go crazy and ending up like a psychotic clown. When you’re always serious, you’re going to lose it and turn into the Joker. Not necessarily with a lipstick smile on your face but you’ll be as messed up inside as he is. If you have an emotional release, an emotional valve, you’ll be much more stable. Maybe not a stable genius but stable still. Ridicule and comedy work wonders. Ridiculing regimes always works. Just ask Aleksander Dugin, who has apparently come up with a really, really long hit list because his sensitive self is offended that so many people make fun of Russia.

I like real-life situational comedy. I don’t like these well-rehearsed stand-up shows where you know it’s all about the money and it’s all fake with every word planned. And don’t get me started on these fake laughs in the background after each sentence on TV shows. It’s so stupid and forced, don’t you think? It’s actually telling the viewers: ”You’re so dumb that we’re going to tell you when to laugh.” Now, that is comical in and of itself.

Life writes the best absurdist scripts and scenarios. Take my friend, for example. He’s an accomplished academic. He was walking to a bus station here in Warsaw at around 6 a.m. when a guy with a knife walked up to him. The guy introduced himself as Robin Hood who had been put on this Earth to rob the rich and give to the poor. For some reason, he had classed my friend as rich. The guy was obviously mentally ill and my friend had to use his linguistic prowess and psychological profiling to persuade the lunatic that he was just a poor academic who could actually use Robin Hood’s services. Robin Hood bought it and, seeing that my academic friend was no enemy, the lunatic walked away. My friend got the hell out of there as fast as he could. See? Situational comedy bordering on a tragedy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no cheerleader (just look at my smiley face in my picture, it’s called smiling-in-Polish for a reason), but I do like to laugh from time to time at some absurdity around me. I sometimes laugh at things others don’t find even remotely funny. Go figure. Still, there are limits. If someone’s giggling at a funeral, okay, could be nervousness or some other psychological defense mechanism, but if he’s also hitting on a weeping widow, then you’re dealing with a psychopath.

Comedy and embracing the absurd is a useful skill to have which can save you from a beating – or worse.

For example, we can use comedy to avoid answering difficult questions at a party without offending your friends and acquaintances. While I’m not a fan of toxic positivity where any kind of a negative emotion is a sign of failure, cynicism or whatever else life coaches come up with, it’s no secret that putting on a happy face, even dumbing yourself down at times to signal you’re not a threat to anyone’s authority, well, all of this makes people relaxed around you. They are more likely to open up to you. Shared misfortunes and grievances – now, that’s a big one. Nothing unites better than commiserating over shared misfortunes and grievances.

It’s unlikely anyone’s going to ask you difficult questions in the middle of a jovial meeting. If he or she does ask you something you don’t wanna talk about, you can always turn it into a joke. Better yet, there’s a grain of truth in every joke. The art of insulting someone while hiding behind comedy is a fine skill to have. Just ask court jesters who insulted kings without losing their heads or family jewels. Even when someone suspects you’re hiding the truth behind comedy, you can always jokingly dismiss their suspicions as absurd. 

You can really get absurdist about hell. Kafkaesque imaginations run rampant when conjuring up images of hell. The best part is that everything is possible in hell. The idea of hell as fire and brimstone is so pedestrian. I prefer personalized hell where your flaws, the flaws you do so much to hide from the world, are laid bare and used against you. I wrote a short story on social media a while back. I wasn’t expecting this, but the story was so well-received, I’ve since deleted it and used the story in my novel.

Four people with drastically different biographies explore hell where they encounter all sorts of horrors. Yes, as cliche as it sounds, we never get tired of hearing about hell.

The team hears a clicking sound of stilettos and sees a Girl Scout in a pencil skirt uniform. The girl with the blonde bangs is running away from someone or something. She turns to the team and screams, ”Help me!”, only to run off because the tumult is getting louder and louder. Turns out, it’s a special Karen squad, seventy-two-strong. The women want a refund for the messed up cookie orders and, of course, they blame the Girl Scout. And yes, they all want to see the manager, as well. No rest for the wicked has never been so appropriate.

One of the Karens stops and tells the team that the Scout was a Russian propagandist before ending up in hell. Her torture doesn’t end on being chased by a gang of Karens; she must also spell out long English words at random as soon as these words pop up in her head. The clicking sound of her stilettos always gives her location away to the let-me-see-the-manager women.

So, again, be ready to embrace the absurd or the absurd world is going to make you go crazy.

The choice is yours.