Humor is a necessity of life - like oxygen, water or chocolate. There is an undeniable need for humor on a daily basis and you can see just how necessary it is when you enter a place that is completely devoid of it. Not surprisingly, the Department of Motor Vehicles comes to mind.
Everyone needs distraction from the gloom and doom that surrounds us in real life. That's why we have the Jon Stewarts and the David Lettermans of the world. We love to laugh. We want to laugh. And, we'd all be better off if we just laughed a little more.
People have a tendency to wallow in their problems. We worry about our ever-increasing waistlines, the spawns of Satan that we call our children, and our miserable jobs. So, out of self-preservation, we look for anything to give us an escape. And, humor is where we find it.
Just look at the number one movie at any given time. More often than not, it is the feel-good comedy that people want to see. We flock in droves to watch Will Ferrell run down the street in his underwear or Kevin James driving around on a scooter as a mall cop. We pay good money for two hours of being in that happy place.
And, have you ever noticed that the "life of the party" is always the person who knows how to make people laugh? They are the magnets to which we're all drawn. We crave a good joke. And, the completely humorless person? Well, you don't want to be that guy (or around him, for that matter). Not only does he die at forty of heart disease, he's the complete buzz kill at that party.
Finding humor in everything, including the "bad" things that happen, is the only way to deal with this world in a healthy manner. Life isn't always a bowl of cherries, so having a light-hearted take on your experience will make the unpleasant parts, at the very least, not as bad. There are people who take their lives so seriously that they often miss the humor to be found in the simple, everyday occurrences.
Laughing is what keeps you sane in an otherwise insane world. I couldn't imagine what life would be like without it, and I don't want to. It would truly be a scary place. There are too many benefits of laughter to discount its importance in our lives. It's actually ridiculous to think that we DON'T need humor on a daily basis.
So, tonight instead of watching the news about all the bad things happening around the world, I think I'll watch Comedy Central and laugh until my stomach hurts.