Laugh at the Absurdity

"It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it." – Seneca

Life is often a poorly written farce. Rather than a drama in three acts, it’s more of a chaotic tavern brawl where chairs are flying and no one saw how it started. It’s a slapstick sitcom with vaudevillian instincts. Life is a banana peel at a funeral.

Your car breaks down on the way to a critical interview. You pay off your credit cards and a tree falls on your house. You fall madly in love and your crush plays for the other team. It’s actually impressive how life manages to land these punches with such comedic precision. If it were happening to someone else, you’d have to laugh. So why not extend yourself the same courtesy?

You can either spend your days lamenting the lack of cosmic justice or chuckle at the utter randomness of it all. You can shake your fist at the sky like a Shakespearean protagonist or recognize that, at a certain point, the profound ridiculousness demands laughter. Not the bitter, defeated kind, but the knowing snicker of someone who sees the joke for what it is.

We’re not pretending everything is fine. Sometimes, things are so spectacularly not fine that the only sane response is to just crack up at how bonkers it all is. Stoicism doesn’t propose that you just not feel the pain; it proposes that you master your response to it. And what better way to master disappointment than to rob it of its power by treating it like the punchline it is? Disappointment wants you to take it seriously. Don’t. It hates that.

So next time disaster strikes, take a moment. Observe the sheer artistry of the chaos. Appreciate the timing, the irony, the complete commitment of the universe to keeping things interesting. Then, let out a dry snort and carry on. Because if life insists on being a comedy, you might as well enjoy the show.