In a message dated 97-12-15 13:44:25 EST, [log in to unmask] writes:

> A few of my clients have critiqued me as being much too serious. I must
learn
>  more about using this tool of humor.

I feel like a hair rejuvination commercial is coming on.

I was much too serious, and silent, when dealing with the "outside" world
beyond my close family and friends, for many years and have, over time, come
to the conclusion that I have more to offer by letting myself relax, which for
me ends in the humorous vein, I'm told. Sometimes I make people laugh when I
am simply trying to answer their questions.

There was a section of years in which I was afraid to go to the grocery store
because I could not deal with the interaction with people - my hermit side. As
well, fairly serious depression and self degradation. Cosmic paranoia. You can
ask my wife, Kathy, how much I hate to make phone calls, and try to get her to
make the calls when I am at home. I had problems in business because I did not
want to interact with people.

You can use humour as a tangential way of getting to the mark... which I think
is the intent of being serious. Like, "Let's get down to business here."

Well, a bit of joking opens roads that would otherwise be closed, and relieves
tension. The problem with being serious is that everyone gets ill at ease,
dealing with insecurities about being perfect, which none of us are, thank
gawd. If we were all perfect it would be very boring and we would drive each
other nuts. So why bother?

Being humorous, or saying the occasional stupid thing, puts others at ease to
be themselves. I'm not saying that you should go out of your way to make a
fool of yourself. Nothing more obnoxious than a forced jester. Beside that,
the humorous can be difficult to maintain. An art in itself.

A portion of humour, when carried to the cutting edge, is that it reveals our
faulty perceptions of reality (all percpetions of reality being faulty) and
cuts us bare naked to our bones. You can convey a lot of really heavy things
with humour that would never get across in  a "serious" discussion.
Philisophically, humour is an existenz communicator. If people naturally
laugh, then the body is physiologically reacting to the communication.
Laughter is a much deeper level of communication than intellectual discourse.
Being serious, to a certain extent, is limiting our senses to a very narrow
band of reality.

I like to say that I am a perfectionist at heart, but I try not to let it get
in my way.

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