The Greatest Comedy of Errors is Forgetting How to Laugh Together
Written by Martha Maria Smith, Bilingual Mentor
Martie Smith's journey as a Resilience Ambassador began in Colombia and highlights her steadfast strength and adaptability, from her service in the US Air Force to becoming a Radiation Therapist and a certified personal trainer at 62. An internationally acclaimed author and Poet Laureate, she mentors young individuals and shares her expertise.
We have become remarkably good at making people laugh while quietly forgetting what laughter was created to do. I have been thinking a lot about humor lately. Not because the world has stopped laughing, but because I am not sure we are laughing for the same reasons anymore.
Somewhere along the way, making someone the joke became easier than making someone feel welcome. We celebrate the quickest comeback, reward the sharpest insult, and replay embarrassing moments as entertainment. Everyone laughs, yet I cannot help wondering if everyone leaves lighter. Does laughter still bring us together, or have we quietly turned it into another way of keeping score?
Life has never needed our help creating comedy. It has been written since the beginning of time. One cartoon that still makes me smile is Gary Larson’s The Far Side, the one with the “School for the Gifted.” A group of students pushes with all their might on a door that clearly says “Pull.” Every time I see it, I laugh because I have been that person more times than I care to admit. Maybe you have too.
That cartoon has stayed with me for years because no one is really the target. We all are. Every one of us has spent far too much energy pushing on a door that needed a different approach. Sometimes it is a conversation. Sometimes it is a relationship. Sometimes it is a dream we are trying to force instead of understanding. The joke is not that we are foolish. The joke is that we are wonderfully human, imperfectly Divine.
At the time, those moments rarely feel funny. They feel frustrating, awkward, or disappointing. Then time does something remarkable. It quietly adjusts the focus. What once felt like failure becomes the story that fills a room with laughter because everyone recognizes a little of themselves in it. I wonder if that is the kind of comedy we were always meant to protect.
The older I become, the less interested I am in being impressive and the more interested I am in what connects us. Titles fade. Awards gather dust. Perfect images eventually become yesterday’s news. What remains are the moments that remind us we belong to one another. A shared smile. A laugh that catches us by surprise. The freedom to admit we do not have everything figured out without fearing we will become the punchline.
Looking back, some of my greatest lessons arrived wearing the costume of inconvenience. Plans unraveled. Doors closed. Detours appeared without permission. I certainly was not laughing while I was living through those seasons. I was asking questions, searching for answers, and wondering what I could not yet see. Only later did I realize life was not working against me. It was inviting me to widen the frame. What once looked like failure slowly revealed itself as preparation. What once felt like loss became wisdom, which I could never have gained any other way.
That realization changed the way I understand resilience. I no longer see it as becoming harder. I see it as refusing to lose my tenderness while growing stronger. Resilience is allowing hope to sit beside heartbreak without asking either one to leave. It is trusting that perspective often arrives long after the lesson begins and believing that today’s confusion may become tomorrow’s gratitude.
There is a difference between laughing at life and laughing at people. One expands the heart. The other quietly shrinks it. One builds a connection. The other builds walls so gradually that we hardly notice they are there. I have never believed kindness makes humor weaker. I believe it makes humor unforgettable because everyone is invited to share it instead of someone being asked to carry it alone.
Read more from Martha Maria Smith
Martha Maria Smith, Bilingual Mentor
Martie Smith's journey as a Resilience Ambassador began in Colombia and highlights her unwavering strength and adaptability. She exemplifies resilience from her service in the US Air Force to becoming a Radiation Therapist and certified personal trainer at 62. As an internationally acclaimed author and poet, Martie mentors young individuals, sharing her expertise and spreading messages of hope and resilience globally as a captivating speaker.
