Why so serious?

Last week while collecting my stuff from the meeting room, I saw a Duke published magazine. I decided to have a peek as the cover boasted few interesting topics. As I flipped through the magazine until I arrived at the last page, I caught one sentence that struck me: People who took themselves too seriously. I moved my eyes to the previous sentence and it read: What is it that you most dislike? Apparently it's an interview with John Barness, a visiting Duke professor.

I immediately took that magazine with me and read the whole interview. At that moment, I knew I like this guy. We have a common ground even though we never knew each other. I, like him, hate people who took themselves so serious and the worst kind of this people is that they couldn't laugh at themselves.

I knew few people who happened to be in this category. Oh, what a pain in the ass. Being around them is so stressful. Is like they have to be the most perfect person in the world and anything goes wrong even though it's something insignificant can cause drama. Furthermore, I have to be careful in whatever I say or do. Even if it's a joke, they took it seriously and assumed I was making fun of them.

Growing up with a family who jokes a lot about each other and married a person who is not afraid to criticize me has made me become cool about people saying whatever they wanted to say to me as long as it's not over the top la. Agak-agak la kan. Kalau dah super melampau tu semua orang pun marah.

Without I realized, my friends have this same attitude as mine. You know, tak kisah dengar kutukan depan-depan kind of species. This friends that are honest in friendship and those who I stay close until now. Even at workplace before this, thank God, most of my colleagues were that kind of species. Those who couldn't handle it, I found myself drifting away from them.

The kind of people who can't laugh at themselves, find that they surrounded by friends who always praise them and say all those sugary and flowery stuff all the time. This is concluded by my observation in social networking called Facebook and Friendster. Haha.. No, seriously. I matched their personality and the comments they got and boom, that's the conclusion.

Well, life is short. Why take everything too serious? I mean if we want to take every single thing too serious, best ke hidup? There are some stuff that need to take seriously and there some that can be chilled. Trust me, if we can laugh at ourselves, people will become less judgmental to us. If we took ourselves too serious, people will scrutinize every little thing we do. Because I know I do that.

I give you this situation:
You are walking with your friend in a crowded hallway. You don't realize that there's a fire extinguisher right in front of you and you knock yourself at that thing. Everybody stop walking and looks at you. What do you do?
(A) You look embarrassed, angry at the other people that stare at you, swear furiously quietly and walk away.
(B) Look shock and burst into laughter.

If you choose (B), welcome to my club. If you choose (A), obviously everything must be perfect in everywhere you go don't you?

Actually that situation happened to me before (please don't ask me where the hell was I looking when walking) and I chose (B) as my reaction. As a result, everybody around laugh with me and that whole situation become a funny incident instead of an embarrassing moment in my life.

So please learned to laugh at yourself. You don't know how good it feels like. You become less angry and people might actually like you as a friend.