Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, described the things that helped the prisoners cope with their horrendous conditions, “To discover that there was any symptoms of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider. But he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint traces of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor more than anything else in the human makeup can afford, and aloofness and inability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds p. 54.”
NOTE: The use of humor can take a tough situation and reduce the tension associated with it, if only for a moment. We frequently create our own humor by adding an exaggeration to a situation. For example, an insensitive boss tosses a stack of papers on a worker’s desk and demands, “I want this report in an hour.” The worker in the break room relays the incident to his colleagues and adds, “We he gets home I wonder if he tells his pregnant wife, “I want the baby born now while I have a minute.” They all laugh and agree that is probably what happens.
