Those who cannot laugh at the tragedy of life go insane.
Most of us neither understand life nor do we ever try. For most, life is just an emotional rollercoaster between hedonism and tragedy. Either it's a road trip with friends, or break-up. Either buying a new thing, or illness. Most never look at life and throw some questions at it. Hell, they don't even know that they can question it. But, some people do wake up. They do question it. But the nature of life is such that you get no right answers. The default of life is suffering and everybody who wakes up eventually understands that. Some go insane, some stay sane but die everyday, some however find a way. I think the way is intentional humour.
The humour I'm referring to, isn't the mainstream one. Dark jokes on reels and tiktok, double meaning jokes and pick up artistry — these are not what i consider to be humour. Although memes are much better in that case, but that is still not what I'm referring to. The humour that I'm referring to, is a kind of existential humour that comes from laughing at your own tragedies. Such a humor does not arise from entertainment, but from confrontation. It arises when you stare at the abyss for so long that you start to find it hilarious. Both the abyss and the act of staring at it.
It sounds like common sense but i hold it to be the toughest thing to do in life. Mostly because how counterintuitive it feels. Imagine you're 19, you live in a place you hate, studying in a place you hate, with a broken laptop, a potato phone and a crappy internet, you get to meet your gf and friends once every 6 months or so for 10 minutes, financially you're doing as bad as it can be and your father is unwell, and on top of that, you get in a quarrel with your mother one day and every bit of frustration you had kept inside yourself — just blasts. Boom, adrenaline. You have punched your way through a damn bathroom door, 5 punches through the door, ~50 minor cuts and 6 major ones and possibly a fractured finger, dripping blood all over the tiles. Can you laugh at it? Ridiculous, I know. Which reasonable person would do that? But that is the catch. Life is unfortunately not a math problem with a single correct answer. It has so many answers that you possibly cannot understand which one is the correct one. Inevitably, being rational backfires. Trying to solve life is like trying to solve a PhD level math problem with both of your hands tied, eyes blindfolded, in a concert and with no knowledge of math. Even better, the question isn't clear either. This isn't to say that you shouldn't try understanding life but that you should adopt a humorous way to do it.
If life is a wound, then humor is a very effective antiseptic cream.