There’s an unfortunate and untrue division in our daily language that places serious and work as opposed to laughter and being serious. Work and play are basically antonyms if you do a quick run over to a thesaurus. It’s an everyday or sort of commonsense division that we all essentially agree is accurate. We may never actually say we agree, but our language use suggests as much. It’s also something I’ve been trying to work through for a couple of months. I’ve mentioned this worrisome division in other places both in my book and in my other posts that are littered around the interwebs. I would have taken the time to link them all, but I guess I am just being lazy.

We see this division in our ordinary language. Kids are often admonished to take things like school or sports, “more seriously.” Kids who laugh and play too much are told to quit it, because such behavior is inappropriate. When we’re told to “grow up” the assumption is that childish things are not appropriate for adult tasks. Serious work is no place for and has no space for levity. Laughter is anathema to efficiency. Respite through humor interrupts delivery of the deliverable.

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This isn’t meant to be another lament of the loss of childhood and rehash what many others have written about relative the awfulness of adulting. About how we all wish we had the body of our 20’s, the lack of responsibility of a kid, and the financial freedom of the independence of a robber baron. Life goals such as these are probably one of the reasons that we see laughter and humor as the opposite of seriousness and work. Irrespective of, regardless of, and irregardless of all that, it’s important that we come to understand that this division of our lives into the serious and lighthearted is a problem.

Just after I graduated college, I took a job as a kitchen manager helping to open a new restaurant. It was a new group thrown together with a monumental amount of work to accomplish. I worked so many hours in such a short time that I remember actually falling asleep standing up. In hindsight, this approach wasn’t the best. While we worked and as we got ever more behind in doing what we needed to do, the goals never seemed to be unachievable. I never felt disengaged or alienated from the folks I worked with. It was quite the opposite. This is much different than many of the stories you hear about the workplace even today. Perhaps I was too young to know any better or too optimistic. I don’t know. 

In spite of all the factors that would predict an unhealthy and disengaged workforce, it never seemed that way. We worked well together. Even at our most tired moments, when the tickets had formed into a kite-tail hanging off the printer, what I remember most is the jokes we shared, the laughs we had that helped us get through or take a break from the never-ending pile of work. We teased one another, we played practical jokes, and had a couple of our own inside jokes here and there. While I have no desire to ever open another restaurant, I know for a fact that had there not been humor, levity and laughter present during a good bit of that experience I would not be relating it to you now. The camaraderie we had in that restaurant, the challenges we faced, the laughs we shared, and smiles we gave to one another not only helped us work better as a team, but it helped to each individually be more engaged. Had there been no levity, no laughter, the restaurant opening would have gone quite poorly. This isn’t to say that the opening was flawless. It wasn’t.

I expect that you have some similar memories. Maybe they’re recent (hopefully) or perhaps they’re more removed like mine. But if you reflect on those experiences, I bet you remember a lot more of the levity and a lot less the hard work. Compare that to another work experience where laughter and levity weren’t present, were perhaps avoided, or where such behavior was discouraged. What are your memories of that? Would you go back? Probably not.

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