I'll never forget a conversation I had with my sister, Izelle, once. We were talking about our styles of humor, and concluded that all her jokes were about her being awesome, and all of my jokes were about me being awful.
That's an exaggeration of course. (Izelle's actually very modest and down to earth, therein lying the humor) But it's fascinating how different I am, humor-wise, in that it's hard for me to speak highly (or at least positively) about myself, even in jest.
I'll skip ahead to a main point of this post: the purpose of humor. Not to say there's only one purpose... But I think that one of the most powerful things comedy does is repackage the horrible and the frightening things in life and make them bearable.
Used outwardly, we can take tragedy and injustice and spin them into satire. But you can also turn the skill inward, and I think that's where my self-deprecation comes from. Yes, it's meant to amuse people, but it's also a way for me to bring my very real fears to the surface.
I, like many people, am afraid that I really am awful. That I'm ugly, or unlovable, or in some way inadequate, and I need an socially acceptable way to talk about it. And so I joke about it. Because really, in an odd, selfish way, I need to voice these insecurities, I need other people to hear them, and I need to be able to dismiss the issues immediately afterward, before things turn grim, or, God forbid, intimate. Humor makes that possible.
But this is not a sad thing. Actually, it's a strangely wonderful thing. In humor, you and I can talk about the things that horrify us, things that depress us, things that threaten us, things that absolutely break our hearts... And then we smile, precisely when we shouldn't.
Few things I've ever done are as profoundly powerful as that.
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