But It's Just a Joke!

Humour is a potent force for human bonding. Nothing quite cuts through and dissolves tension like a well-timed joke. Nothing quite lifts the spirit as swiftly as a roaring belly-laugh or tickles the heart like a secret giggle between friends and loved ones. Sometimes the laugh comes at our expense, but it can be precisely the medicine we never realised we needed!

Friends and close relations can rib each other and have it mean nothing. They just dust it off and move on the moment the conversation is over. This is wonderful — when the joke is bilaterally enjoyed.

However, I’ve never understood mean-spirited or disrespectful behaviour towards supposed friends in the name of banter. Maybe it's just me being idealistic, but I've always subscribed to the idea that we're supposed to be kind and understanding towards our friends, or at least have the sensitivity to know whether our words will land or wound.

It’s something we are encouraged to put up with and just “lighten up” about. We don’t want to seem difficult or uptight. We fear rocking the boat because we don’t want to lose a relationship — perhaps one that was never founded on equality and mutual respect in the first place. We chip away parts of ourselves trying to fit into moulds that were never intended for us. And it’s never worth it in the end.

For the sender, of course, it’s easy to make careless, throwaway comments when one has absolved themselves of responsibility to care for another’s feelings. After all, it’s the other person who is overreacting. They should understand how I am, they should know I don’t mean it, they should \[insert any other justification\].

Contempt, cruelty or dominance disguised as humour or banter is nearly impossible to refute — because it was only ever meant to be a joke, right? How do we counter an “innocent” joke without appearing too sensitive? How do we honour our own sense of something being off, when the evidence is invisible everywhere but in our own hearts? How many red flags can we ignore before our own intuition gets overridden?

For the sake of evenhandedness, resilience is a powerful quality to develop. Being able to let petty comments and minor offences slide like water off a duck’s back is useful for our own protection and healing. Doing our own inner work helps us sharpen our discernment so that we can distinguish real problematic behaviour from what may be our own shadow projections. This level of scrutiny and honesty is not a favour we owe to those who hurt us. It’s for our benefit, to help prevent our hearts closing up for good.

That said, this isn’t a call to put up with rude treatment perpetually or callous treatment ever. When a behaviour is not a one-off error but becomes a recognised pattern, it's far less likely to be our own projection. I’m a keen advocate for self-reflection and self-realisation, and for being understanding of ordinary human flaws, but the truth is that it’s not always us — sometimes it actually is just them!

Effective communication can resolve so many conflicts, but it’s not a panacea. When communication hits a wall, and it will when facing low receptivity and high ego, the self-respecting choice might be to step away and not feel guilty for knowing we deserve better. Not all connections we build were meant to last forever, and endings don’t need to be viewed as failure, but as the natural closing of chapters in our life saga.

And it is a kindness to ourselves if we can be accepting of that without taking on undue burden to repair that which is beyond mending. We can take our time to heal, mourn if that’s what the heart needs, but then pick up the pieces to build a better life. We can cherish all that was good, gather and integrate the lessons learned and move forward to a brighter future as a more refined version of ourselves.

Life is essentially impartial, and it gives the other individual the exact same opportunity to learn and grow from the shared experience. It’s not for us to determine how they approach this opportunity, only that we seize our own.

The idea isn’t to become overly grim or solemn for fear of offending anyone. A life lived too seriously often feels like a half-life, and it would be miserable to wander the world perpetually walking on eggshells. However, it’s possible to be light-hearted, humorous and authentic without ever having to hurt another soul. These might not be the kind of friendships and relationships we see dramatised on screen, but they do exist.

Such joyous relationships are nurtured between individuals who are content in themselves, so the mutual respect, love and understanding overflow from their own cup. We too can become shining examples of this in the world. It all starts with us; the joy and warmth we seek through external friendships have their Source within our own being.

Our soul regularly demands a generous dollop of lightness and levity just to remind ourselves that pure joy is our birthright, not something we need to battle and beg for.

Unbridled joy emerges from an innocent childlike heart, with no ulterior motive or agenda, so natural that it won’t even be aware of its state. In fact, we all start off with innocence as our true essence, then we embark upon a colourful journey of experiences, in which innocence often gets suppressed by its overbearing cousins: ennui, cynicism and bitterness.

Our sense of humour, among other traits, is inevitably tinged by our inner state of mind. When we transform our inner world by our own efforts and persistence, our experience of the external has no choice but to re-align. Nothing that is inherent in us can ever truly be taken away. Though that innocence may feel lost, it’s merely in hiding, waiting for the grand return — to be chosen once more. And this time, it’s staying for good, no matter what anyone else chooses.

The authentically childlike soul doesn’t ever need to cut anyone down to feed itself because it’s already full past the brim with joy, ecstatically frolicking in its own ocean of love.

It might find the most mundane things fascinating or hilarious, and its purity of intention renders it harmless. It doesn’t care for judging anything in the world because it has become the very origin of wonder.

When such a childlike soul laughs, the entire cosmos laughs along with it. That’s the ultimate joke, and guess what — no one’s left out.

Kiruthika Rajeswaran