What if you could turn chaos into comedy?
I think one of the reasons home movies have been a hit since their inception is that the passage of time turns yesterday’s chaos into today’s comedy. What if we could trust this enough to turn today’s chaos into today’s comedy?
It’s our most watched family video.
I’m recording my three kids at the breakfast table. They’re nine, five, and three. My wife is somewhere off camera, making them a genuine Guatemalan breakfast, having just returned from a research/missions trip in Antigua.
I’ll let the video speak for itself:
I laugh harder every time I watch it. Each of my kids personalities is show-cased so beautifully. I’m pretty sure I was not laughing inside as I recorded it, however. Given our stage of family life, I was probably wondering how much the plantains cost, worrying about my daughter falling out of her chair, and wishing for a little peace and quiet.
Chaos then, comedy now.
It reminds me of traveling as a boy in our old, almost broken-down car from Missouri back to Illinois for the holidays. I was seven, my sister was five, and my brother was one. We stopped at a Pizza Hut for dinner and started with breadsticks. The basket they gave us had some other customer’s half-masticated pizza crust buried underneath a bunch of newish-looking breadsticks. My brother pooped his diaper so badly it oozed all over the booster seat. When we tried to beat a quick retreat, my mom’s brand new winter coat got blown across the parking lot and run over by a truck. As we pulled out of the parking lot, Peter Cetera sang, “Everybody needs a little time away,” on the FM radio coming out of the tinny speakers. Over the years, it has become our family’s most laughed about moment.
Chaos then, comedy now.
As I enter the heart of this holiday season, I’m going to try to remember that, and I’m going to try to take it a step farther. If humaning is the art of opening our hearts to the whole human experience, I wonder what would happen if we didn’t depend upon time to open our hearts to our chaos, but chose to open them ourselves, right now, in the midst of it.
I wonder if chaos now would become comedy now, too.
I’m curious…
Do you have any hacks for handling the holiday chaos? I and the rest of our Humaning community would love to hear about them in the comments!
No hacks, just purposeful thinking. I have been disappointed in more Christmas's as an adult than I care to mention. As a child, it was the purest time of my year. Out of school the days seems to last forever. Wishing only for snow and sledding opportunities and spending what seemed like hours just admiring the Christmas tree and the wonder of the holiday as my mother convinced us to take it in (most likely trying to catch a break from the ruckus). As I became the responsible one I went all out to make it pleasant and ensure Santa was generous and kind. I dug in to "BE" thoughtful and I pushed to try to "FEEL" the reason for the season as I did my best to work and live the daily life adults have to live until given that momentary paid leave we saved up over the year. I felt so obligated to soak in what I could before it was gone and all I got was burnt out. Toss in Black Friday, shipping issues, and moments of ungrateful children and a stressed spouse...boom, Christmas was for someone else's joy, not mine. I've tried to get it done earlier, let it go and just simplify, be silly and just have fun....all those experiments did not fly with me hoping to have and feel some semblance of what I felt as a child. But then after some failures, I have found some mental solutions that help to tidy up the reality of now and how I do it.
1. Recreating, reliving, or otherwise trying to put what was my childhood into my own children's experience is not how they live or will remember their own experience. I had mine, I have what I cherish and what I regret to make me my own person and I am worth being that special that nobody else gets to have what I had. I actually still have those feelings and memories to cherish and use as "fuel" for the moments I take now to reflect on them. I can be happy now because of happiness I felt then.
2. Spreading my joy and my love of what was and my hope for what will be is not a mission to alter the outcomes of other people's lived experiences. It is just me, opening myself to others to expand my own happiness in conjunction with theirs. If we can copaceticly allow for weakness and pain to be part of the mix as we interact with each other and honor the loveableness of each other as we do so, it isn't too hard to make a new memory of something with high value in the mental space we give to that moment.
3. Difficult people and anyone who is not in the grove with us deserve to have peace and feel love. It's not my responsibility to judge their worth or their hearts based on a moment in time that I have with them. I have to judge for myself, about my own actions and reactions in moments and stay true to what is right and good for my effort to live righteously rather than controlling others. I cannot make others be nicer, safer, or otherwise happier. Even a little one I have stewardship over is not controlled by me, only enticed by my efforts to convince them to choose for themselves what is best for them. Usually my love wins over my frustration in every scenario that plays out to a positive end.
4. Like Kelly is saying in this article, having the fortitude to smile at and embrace a little chaos is really a key to feeling alright about the day and the season. Holding onto the pain and knowing it is worth some pain to have what is now and understanding what is right makes things easier. When things are easier they hurt less and gratitude has a way to wedge itself into our hearts. I can smile because I can take in the chaos while simultaneously remembering moments of joy, thusly living the moment I have with peace. It works because I know pain has value and because my smile of wisdom will help rather than add to someone else's moment of pain. My love can invite some pain in a way that feels more like a worthy sacrifice instead of an arduous trial.
First off, thank you for the books! I’m so excited and will treasure them.
I grew up in a house where tensions were high in peaceful times. When chaos arose, my siblings and I held our breath in some semblance of frozen fear wondering what would come next. Part of my own counseling journey has been addressing those tender parts of my frozen fear. Healing came when I was encouraged to ask myself what I needed at that age, in those moments. I needed laughter and I needed my parents to see things through my eyes. From my perspective, things never seemed that bad. This healing came when my kids were small (now 18,15,12) and I began applying it. When crazy happened, I would force myself to see through childlike eyes and ask what they were thinking. This was so therapeutic. It has also involved lots of laughing in the moment and sometimes inviting my kids to say a string of “bad” words with me, which made them laugh, my husband and I laugh, and diffused situations. My husband I may make reference to a movie one liner in a moment of chaos to diffuse. Often times these are inside jokes, and he and I get a good chuckle even if no one else understands what the heck we are saying. Hugs help. Gentle reminders that we’re all in this together.