we lower our cortisol, which makes us feel calmer; and we release dopamine, making us feel more bonded....
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Research shows that leaders with a good sense of humour are seen as 27 percent more motivating. Laughter shortens the path to connection. When we laugh, our brains release a cocktail of hormones. We release endorphins, which give us a feeling similar to a runner’s high; we lower our cortisol, which makes us feel calmer; and we release dopamine, making us feel more bonded.
Humour is not about becoming a comedian. It’s about looking at the world in a different way. There’s a psychological principle called the priming effect that says our brains are wired to see what we’ve been set up to expect.
It’s also about being human. When work gets serious and life gets busy, we become transactional. It’s easy to believe that if we take our lives or our mission seriously, the presence of humour betrays that mission. That gravity and levity are somehow at odds. But research says that humour is a choice, that we can do serious things without taking ourselves so seriously, and in fact, often, we can do them better.
Start by recognising it’s not about you. So don’t ask “Will this make me sound funny?” Instead, ask: “How will this make other people feel?”
Which also means never punching down, that is, making fun of someone of lower status. And be sure to check your distance. How close are you personally to what you’re making light of?
Start small. When we live our lives on the precipice of a smile, we shift how we interact with the world, and in turn, how it interacts back.
At times, poetry seem like this dead art form for old white men who just seem like they were born to be old, like Benjamin Button or something. But poetry is the power of language made accessible, expressible. Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people. Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges. And it’s this connection-making that makes poetry not just powerful, but also political.
When people tell you to write a poem about a certain subject but not make it political, it sounds like you have to draw a square, but not make it a rectangle, or build a car and not make it a vehicle; it doesn’t makes sense, because all art is political. The decision to create, the artistic choice to have a voice, the choice to be heard is the most political act of all.
Poetry is political in at least three ways: Firstly: what stories we tell; when we’re telling them; how we’re telling them; and why we’re telling them (says so much about the political beliefs we have, about what types of stories matter). Secondly, who gets to have their stories told – who is legally allowed to read; who has the resources to be able to write; who are we reading in our classrooms (says a lot about the political and educational systems that all these stories and storytellers exist in). Lastly, poetry is political because it’s preoccupied with people. If you look at history, notice that tyrants often go after the poets and the creatives first. They burn books because they’re terrified of them. Poets have this phenomenal potential to connect the beliefs of the private individual with the cause of change of the public, the population, the polity, the political movement.
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