I am famous for doing two things at once. It’s a skill that many working moms probably have—and being a single working mom adds a lot of opportunity for practice! But there are two things that can’t be done at the same time: feeling gratitude and anger. These emotions cancel each other out. Adding a smile and defaulting to humor with almost anything we’re doing—whether holding a particularly long, uncomfortable yoga pose or acknowledging the wittiness of the universe as it offers up some particularly wry irony—is always a good idea. Laughing at ourselves, with others, or generally acknowledging the absurdity of a situation (shared or kept to ourselves) adds flow and ease to the complications of our day.
Of course, we all find different things funny, but I love Darren Bader’s work and his use of humor. He explores the absurd by being not just provocative but also playful. In Lasagna on Heroin from 2012, he injected heroin into a piece of lasagna. A later series involved selling money at a different price than its “actual” value—some for more, some for less. I bought one of the latter, and though it sits in a file, knowing I have it makes me smile and feel grateful. That’s part of the incredible power of art.
