Last week friends and I treated ourselves to tickets to the Carol Burnett show in downtown Chicago. At age 83, she is still warm and funny and quite a remarkable woman—a reminder that our age really says very little about us anyway. A few selected replays of some of the funnier moments on her TV shows had us all in stitches. We laughed till we nearly split our sides!
What struck me was how different TV shows are today than back in the 1960s and 1970s when we watched her variety shows. We had variety shows that included lots of laughter and light humor in those days. Today we're more serious and cynical. Humor today seems to have a bite to it. Actually, in Burnett's Q and A with the audience last night (just as she used to do in her TV shows), that topic came up.
We could probably fill pages trying to determine the veracity of this and also delving into the reasons for it. But that's not my point here. What this does for me is to remind me to lighten up a bit and touch back into that sense of humor that includes splitting-your-sides laughter. Yes, life is serious and it's not for sissies. But perhaps we could use a bit more humor, wonder and joy in our lives. And a little less cynicism and anger. What do you think?
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