80% Play and 20% Serious

“But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.” ― George Carlin, Last Words

That's Pareto's 80/20 Law.

I tell people I'm 80% play and 20% serious (and that 20% can be very serious indeed).

I tell them the reason I don't take most things seriously is that they aren't serious things. Even if most people think they're serious, in reality they're not.

Let's put it this way: I once had a woman tell me, "You are a man on the outside and a little boy on the inside." I just laughed.

In point of fact, I try to base my life on dogs. What do dogs do? Eat, sleep - and play. As Henry Ward Beecher said, "The dog is the god of frolic."

I recently told a woman, "If you want to understand me, pretend I'm a pug."

I also recently told a woman, "When women are with me their lives always get better." She just laughed and said, "God, you're arrogant!" No, just confident and funny.

I do know enough about humor to know that it's based on taking two unrelated things and finding a connection between them. That's the Aha! moment. And it's also based to trying to see everything as new. (The same applies to creativity.)

If there is any downside, it's that people think I'm strange. I've been called "strange," "weird" and "crazy" more than once. I just smile. I consider such people to be Muggles.

When I got around in reading the Bible in my teens I was shocked at what Jesus did. Here was a guy who went to parties, who ate and drank. And what is at parties? Dancing and singing. I thought, I'll be darned. Here was a guy who partied - ate and drank and probably sang and danced. And he had a great sense of humor. Boy, did my church lie to me.

God save us from people who have no sense of humor.

"The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children." - Luke 7.34

"Levi also gave a great entertainment at his house in honor of Jesus..." - Luke 5.29