Tragic Comedy

We reveal most about our­selves by the jokes we tell on our­selves. In the course I am teach­ing, I am hav­ing stu­dents ana­lyze jokes that var­i­ous cul­tures tell on them­selves. Per­son­ally, I iden­tify with red­neck jokes. I grew up on a farm and cat­tle ranch com­bi­na­tion in remote rural New Mex­ico. Jeff Fox­wor­thy speaks to me in his humor. Though I had rel­a­tively prim­i­tive begin­nings, I have cho­sen not to for­get them. They are there to keep me hum­ble. There is noth­ing like grow­ing up in some lit­tle dusty lit­tle “Nazareth” to keep one close to the earth.

I was blessed with a fam­ily that was the­mat­i­cally liv­ing out on-going tragedies and come­dies of para­dox­i­cal suc­cesses and defeats. It was as if there were angels and demons in a wrestling match over our work and per­sonal lives. On just about any given day, we did not know whether to laugh or cry. We felt blessed and cursed at the same time. Dis­cern­ing the dif­fer­ences and mean­ings thereof have taken quite a bit of soli­tude and intro­spec­tion in the days since. The worst things often turned out to be the best. None of it was predictable.

Those themes have con­tin­ued in my life. On any given day I laugh at and with myself — but with an occa­sional knot in my throat. This is a life that no one could make up. I grew up in UFO coun­try and now I live in the land of south­ern skep­ti­cism. Peo­ple in these parts are nice enough, but some­times I wish that God would swoop down and give every­one here a world tour on some sort of magic car­pet (and I am sure I would say the same thing if I lived up North or back out West again). I guess it is easy for life to become small and nar­row wher­ever one lives.

If you have not learned to laugh at or at least about your life by now, you have not been using your imag­i­na­tion. Life has so many built in con­tra­dic­tions that you have to stop and won­der about the mean­ing and direc­tion of it all. Your worst days and your best are too often the same. Life is not a steady incline toward per­fec­tion but a bumpy merry-go-round of the pre­dictable and the bizarre. It is an enrich­ing expe­ri­ence. Relax. Enjoy your part of humanity’s jour­ney. The tragic com­edy bal­ances itself out with the smil­ing Deity that put it all in motion and brings it to fruition.