Cheering Yourself Up

Have you ever noticed that almost every joke we tell involves making fun of someone, someone getting hurt really bad, or even someone dying?  If most of these things were to happen to us in real life or to a person close to us it wouldn't be even a little funny.  It would probably make us feel angry, hurt, or possibly bring us to tears.  And yet, we manage to take the most horrible things and make them funny.  Here is a blonde joke as an example: 

How do you kill a blonde?

You put a scratch and sniff sticker at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Horrible right? No! It's actually kind of hilarious.  So I figured why not use this theory on real life?  I have been feeling extremely conflicted about a situation that has come up in my life and for the life of me could not find anything about it funny.  Then at the same time as thinking about my conflict, a random thought popped into my head that was absolutely hilarious.  I laughed out loud as I was walking up to my apartment.  It was the weirdest thing I have felt in my entire life.  Complete despair evenly mixed with insane hilarity.  I think I stopped breathing for a minute because of it.  I decided then that that is how some people can be so optimistic all the time.  When they are bummed about something they twist it so it doesn't sound as bad as it is.  If they twist it enough or see it with a different perspective I'll bet they could even find a horrible situation funny.  Maybe this thing I'm struggling with will not be as bad as I thought.  Who knows, it might turn out worse than I thought, but when it's over I can find something else to laugh about later to cheer me up.