Humour

I have a ‘friend’ down here who manages to get under my skin nearly every time I meet him. I realised yesterday evening that the only real reason I hang out with him is that my friends hang out with him. I should say ‘was’, of course, because the last two mates of the group I hung out with for the last two months have left. There were six of us, a week ago. Then four left in groups of two, while I realised that the last one wasn’t really a friend at all.

Now I am alone again.

That suits me fine, to be honest; drifting around the beach with no interaction lasting more then a few minutes; time to be with myself.

I got to thinking about why this bloke manages to get under my skin so easily. I came to the conclusion today that there are only two people I know at this time who can get under my skin and that’s this bloke and my dad. That my dad can get under my skin is easily explained, it’s because I love him and therefore he can hurt me; but why this near-stranger, this person I don’t even like?

I thought about why that was and a scary thought jumped into my head: maybe I had lost my sense of humour. The reason that it’s scary is two fold: 1. It rings true; and 2. I’ve always believed that it is my sense of humour that protects me from the bad things in life.

Of course, I’m not sure yet if it’s true – it is still very much an idea bouncing around my head – but in playing with the idea I started thinking ‘if I’ve lost my sense of humour, why?’

It might have been January. That was a terrible month for me, which somehow took away a great deal of my confidence. Maybe I haven’t recovered from it completely yet?

That probably has something to do with it, but I also think it has something to do with this feeling I’ve spoken about in previous entries, where I feel the inexorable rush of time passing me by.

From that sprung another thought, what if I’m not as smart as I think I am? What if I don’t have the ability to actually fulfil my ambition? Or, even worse, what if I’m smart enough to come to the conclusion that I’m not smart enough? What if I can see a large part of the picture, but never the whole picture? What if I’m permanently stuck in second place?

I’ve said this before: a person that finishes in third place is happier than a person who finishes in second place; the reason being that a person in second place will always wonder if he could have been in first if he’d tried a little harder, while a person in third place is happy to just be on the podium.

I don’t want to finish in second place, maybe that’s why I’ve lost my sense of humour.