How to Laugh at the People you Love

As a follow up to my last two posts here and here, I offer this set of rules I have come up with for laughing at people you love. Essentially this is what I have learned through trial and error (mostly error) about how to tease someone the right way. Essentially it comes down to two very simple and obvious principles which are simply and baldly ignored by most people most of the time:

1) Know yourself

2) Know the other person

That's it. That's all you have to do and, not only will it guarantee your learning how to use teasing correctly, but it will also solve 99% of your relationship* problems. And it's free! I am posting it right on the internet for absolutely 0.00 dollars down, and then only three easy payments of $free.99.
Of course, there is always the part where I actually have to do what I have thought of. That is the hard part, and, far from being free, it may well cost me everything I have. It remains to be seen whether the sacrifice is worth the pearl of great price.

How do you know yourself, in the context of friendly teasing? This is primarily a matter of internal awareness of what you are really saying. Loving teasing is shaped by primarily two factors internal factors. The first is the overall context of how your relationship with that person is. Loving teasing can exist only in the context of a loving relationship. How you really feel about this person is the single most important factor in determining whether your banter is loving or not, so if your relationship is shaky or twisted in some way, don't even try it. Heal the relationship first. Teasing is strong fair, only digestible by strong emotional stomachs. If there is an underlying tension in your relationship and you try to tease someone without acknowledging that tension and bringing it to light, it will come out in hidden form in your teasing.

The other factor in knowing yourself is an awareness of your emotional habits and patterns. Granted that your relationship with the other is healthy, we all still have long standing habits, learned from our earliest childhood on, that shape how we deal with conflicts and tension. Some people withdraw, some people hide, some people stick their head in the sand (not the same as hiding), some push, some go straight for the throat, some just try to force the other to submit. There is no one, not one person alive, who does not inherit some unhealthy pattern for dealing with conflict. Patterns very often can be traced from generation to generation within families. You do what your parents did or you react against it in the opposite direction. This is not doom and gloom. It is simply being aware of human beings (seen through the lens of my own behavior) as they really are, i.e. wounded with an existential wound.

These patterns are not the whole story, but they do come into play very strongly when there is conflict within a relationship. Even in a healthy relationship, human beings will not always agree with one another. This is not a bad thing, it is how we grow. The problem comes not from disagreement, but from how we handle that disagreement. If you have a habit of using sarcasm to attack, or light banter to hide, then these are tactics you should avoid. You must also practice being aware of what you are really feeling, the deeper meaning behind that joke. It doesn't have to be malicious to be poisonous. Simple irritation, impatience or annoyance is enough to cause an unbelievable amount of hurt. Even if the relationship is such that you really do love and trust each other, this does not make the hurt less. If anything it makes the hurt even greater because it is dealt out by someone who is trusted, and is therefore a betrayal of that trust.



However, knowing yourself is not yet enough. You must also know the other person, because whether or not they are hurt by what you say depends as much on how they take it as on how you meant it. People misunderstand each other all the time, and misunderstanding causes as much tension and pain as actual malice.

This starts out at the most basic level simply by paying attention to the other. Learning to read body language and conversational cues will go a long way to letting you know how your humor is coming across. Some people are natural at this. I am most definitely not so I have had to devote a lot of effort to this study, but it has been eminently worth it. It also has required a lot of paying attention to people who have a talent for making other people laugh, and imitating their style. (Yes, the whole process sounds rather laborious, but that's how I learned to socialize. The biggest step was learning not to take myself too seriously. It doesn't come naturally to me.)

The second step is learning to tease the way the other person wants to be teased. Which doesn't mean that someone is going to say, "Hey, would you poke fun at me about x, y or z? I really enjoy it when you do that." That would violate the essentially modest nature of teasing. (In fact, I almost feel like thinking this much into it violates that nature. I intend to forget the whole thing as soon as I have written it.) You have to pay attention to how they respond. If you have learned to pay attention to how much fun they are having, rather than how much fun you are having, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out what things are fair game for making any particular person laugh (your mom or dad for instance) and which are off limits.

The next step is to realize that people, especially women but also men, have moods. This means that even though you may have found a way to joke around that is acceptable most of the time, that doesn't mean that it is automatically acceptible if the person is in a bad mood. Even when you know a person really well you still have to be aware of their particular mood at any given moment.
Finally, it has to be mutual. It doesn't do for you to be one who is teasing all the time, but they can't say anything back. Of course if they know you as well as you know them, they should have plenty of material for jokes (if you haven't found something teaseworthy about someone, you don't know them yet.) You absolutely have to laugh at yourself.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes, learn from your mistakes. If you accidentally hurt someone apologize immediately, acknowledge how and why it happened, and take that into account next time.
Knowing another person, however, is problematic because on the deepest level a self is unknowable by another self, at least in this world. Even a husband and wife who have loved each other dearly for sixty years cannot be said to know each other totally. Not yet anyway. There remains a part of the will for which the individual alone is responsible. The key to another's heart is always in the hand of that person and there are places within that heart which can be known only by God. No human being is big enough to fill another's soul.

This may seem like an academic existential distinction but it is of immense practical value because it means that, no matter how well I know the other, I might be wrong. A joke meant in kindness might hit an unsuspected nerve. How damaging this is depends on the overall context of how that relationship stands day to day. It also provides the philosophical basis for a certain humility in our search for knowledge of the other. I can never know her totally (in this life. I leave off discussion of the next), and that, far from being a source of regret, should be a source of joy. It means that no matter how long this friendship lasts I will never run out of friend to know and love. It means that the source of this relationship is quite literally inexhaustible. This humility is essential to healthy relationships because nothing will kill a relationship faster than idolatry, the demand made on a human being to be all in all, to fill a place he or she can never fill.

The language of humility is laughter. It is infinitely far from being the self-deprecating, gloomy "I am a miserable worm of a being" talk of some overly religious types. Laughter alone acknowledges the truth of our limitations, and allows us to rest secure in the knowledge that our limitations, for all their illusions of grandeur, are not the whole story. Not even close.

I will glory in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Psalm 34:2 If you are afflicted you are eligible for the "hear and rejoice" club. And which of us is not afflicted?


*Throughout this post the term "relationship" should not be understood to be speaking exclusively, or even primarily, about romantic relationships. I am instead speaking of the entire gamut of human relationships. Wherever one human being comes into contact with another, there is a relationship of some sort in existence and these principles come into play within the context of that relationship and its nature.

Laugh With Me! Part 2

In Part One I talked about teasing people and how it can so often be abused to hurt people or used to cover up an underlying malice or jealousy the person is unwilling to deal with in a more honest way. However, I don't want you to think that teasing is inherently malicious.

For many people I know, teasing, or back and forth teasing (which we could call banter) is a very real expression of affection. Joking, practical or otherwise, can be done in a spirit of mutual fun which makes it a good time for everyone. For instance, when I tease my sister about her college degree and how she must be looking down on all of her brothers now because she is the only one of us with a degree, I am not for a moment suggesting that she actually is looking down on us. I know that, she knows that. What I am doing, however, is pointing out in a comical, indirect way, that she has accomplished something none of the rest of us have accomplished.

I can remind my brother of the time we did such and such and he face planted on the tile floor from the top bunk and broke his tooth. Or make fun of the overbite he used to have. It made him substitute the "f" sound for the "ch" sound. Great Grandma used to make him say the "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck" rhyme when he was little and thought it was hillarious. I can laugh at him for turning north out of the driveway instead of south because he was too busy dancing in the front seat of the car to pay attention. He can make fun of me for going off trail on a hike and taking a harder way down than he did. We can laugh at each other almost constantly, but there is nothing malicious about it at all.

Teasing someone can be done in a loving fashion. Some might say, "Well, why an indirect compliment? Why not just say it straight out?" Well, there are a lot of psychological reasons for that. Without going too deeply into the existential roots of this dilemma, love is a very shy thing, even among old, old friends. When you compliment someone you make yourself vulnerable, and when you accept a compliment you acknowledge vulnerability. Phrasing a compliment in a roundabout way provides it just a little bit of privacy. There is an inherent modesty in teasing someone lovingly, a modesty that allows you to see, admire and love, without being completely emotionally exposed. Human beings cannot stand to be emotionally naked very often. This is why we wear clothes in the first place. Banter and teasing, or flirtation as a friend of mine calls it (she uses the term regardless of the nature of the relationship, my definition is much narrower) allows us to be affectionate without being promiscuous.

There is also a certain mystery about a roundabout compliment, something that requires a little bit of work, a second thought, to understand. It isn't simply handed baldly from one person to the other, but exists in the interchange between them. This makes it a relational thing, since both have to cooperate in making it what it is.

But I think by far the most common reason for teasing people (for me at least) is simply to make them laugh.

People are such odd creatures. Every single one of them is unique, absolutely singular among all the people that have ever existed. We are have quirks and foibles and flaws, we make mistakes and we do silly things. Some of these things are very serious and hurt other people. Some merely hurt ourselves. Some don't really do much harm, but definitely make us look like idiots. The only proper response to a silly mistake that makes you look like an idiot is a laugh. I delight in people. I delight in their uniqueness, their incomprehensibility, the ability they have to surprise the heck out of you even after you've known them for years. I love the unpredictability of people, and the predictability of people. I laugh out of sheer delight that God should create such wonderfully clumsy creatures. I laugh at the divine foolishness of creating little sparks of spiritual light to shine through blobs of clay. I mourn the ugliness and hatefulness of ignorance and sin, but I also laugh at its idiocy, its banality. It is so pathetic, so useless, so obstinate and childish. I know that Christ has conquered sin, transcended death and redeemed even me! Why should I not laugh? Life is beautiful!

I laugh in the darkness and hardship of deployments or military training because I have hope. I laugh despite even my sins because I have hope. I laugh at my own sins (eventually) because they are opportunities for grace. There is some need in all of us for the laugh of the "cheerful beggar," who knows that he is unworthy and only laughs at it because it highlights God's generosity all the more.
I want people to laugh with me. When I poke fun at someone I am not condemning one of the traits that I despise, I am rejoicing in one of the quirks that makes them unique and inviting them to join in that rejoicing. I want you to join me in laughing at yourself, and I want to join you in laughing at me.

That kind of laughter can heal the world.

Laugh with Me!

I like teasing people. Most people don't get that about me right away, because I have to be pretty comfortable around someone before I start teasing them, but I really enjoy it. I don't think I am so unusual in that regard. Everyone likes teasing other people once in a while, but not so many people enjoy being teased.

It is quite true, teasing can be "taken too far" as they say. I have seen personally family situations and both friendly and romantic relationships in which one person was always teasing the other. Sarcasm, sharp jabs, personal jokes shared in front of strangers or casual acquaintances. Sometimes it is simply ignorance. The person telling the joke or making the remark may simply not see how it is affecting the other person. This happens all the times with parents and their kids. Many parents have no hesitation telling embarrassing stories about their children to other grownups, often in front of the children themselves. They either do not notice (because the child refuses to show it) how much this bothers the child, or they dismiss it saying, "Oh, honey, it's all right. We're all friends here." Certainly very bad psychology, and of questionable value in teaching children to "lighten up." Grownups may be very dismissive of their children's pains, because with the benefit of age and experience they can see how minor their troubles really are. There is some truth to that, and it is of course a parent's job to facilitate their child learning that perspective. What they don't realize is that the child is very small, so a small pain is proportionally just as serious as a large pain to an adult. Also, perspective can only be gained so fast. Children age in God's good time, not at the prodding of impatient adults. In my experience attacking someone's psychological vulnerabilities is not the approach most likely to get them to relax.

Another common scenario for this type of abuse is a situation in which a boy and a girl are old, familiar friends, meeting with another boy who is good friends with the boy, but not with the girl. Because the two boys are close friends, he may well be comfortable sharing jokes and stories about the girl. She however, because she does not know this other guy, may not be comfortable with these stories being shared.

Just as common as this type of ignorance, however, is malice. So many times I have seen "humor" and "good natured banter" used as nothing more than thin veils to disguise very real malice. Hatred in fact, and we have all seen it and experienced it. Indeed, if you have not yourself done it more than once, you are blessed beyond belief. For my part I know that I have been guilty of it.

You can see it in couples putting on the "loving couple" show, but secretly loathing each other's guts. Who has not been at a party or barbecue and seen a couple arrive together, holding hands, smiling and constantly insulting each other. "Oh, did you hear my genius husband's latest exploit? He tried to save us money by fixing the toilet himself instead of hiring a plumber. Next thing I know I hear water splashing in the bathroom and this guy is cursing up a storm. He got sprayed all over with toilet water. Man all of a sudden he couldn't get to the phone book to find a plumber fast enough. Tracked water all over my floor."

Then the husband laughs and says, "Yeah but the best part is I had to leave for work so guess who cleaned it all up? Yeah, joke's on you honey." Or after a mocking comment the mocker laughs and says, "Oh don't be so serious, I'm only joking." But he isn't joking at all. He just can't take responsibility for what he really wants to say.

Everyone watching and listening hears the hatred, the intent to cause pain. It is so palpable it makes you cringe, but the couple cannot seem to find any other way to manage whatever issues they have.
This isn't limited to couples with extreme marital issues. It isn't limited to couples at all. Parents do it to children, children to parents, sibling to sibling, friend to friend. Even the healthiest relationships are relationships between broken human beings, and when broken human beings get angry we very easily resort to hate, or at the very least stop keeping track of what the other person is feeling. With our proclivity for very ordinary selfishness, it doesn't take much to make us nasty, even if we instantly regret it.

With these possibilites it is no wonder if some people I know consider any teasing at all intrinsically ill-natured. "Who would Jesus tease?" They ask, not as the rather interesting hypothetical question that it really is, but in a rhetorical fashion. The implication is that Jesus would never tease anyone, that it is irreverent to think of Jesus joking at all, and that even if you must tell jokes (as a concession to human weakness) they must never be at someone else's expense. That's like saying you must never eat or drink at another's expense. However, if we followed that rule literally there would be no hospitality. There has to be a legitimate way to laugh at another's expense in such a way that it makes them richer, just as these is a way to allow someone else to pay for your meal in such a way that they are richer for it. I believe there is such a way, and tomorrow I will post about that.