Humor

"Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood"

Mary Hirsch

When used effectively, humor is indeed a very good tool to make your point.

Although it may act like a sword that does not draw blood, do not ignore the
fact that it may cause more hurt to emotions and sentiments which can last
longer and more painful than a sword wound. External wounds heal faster.
For internal wounds, time is the only remedy. They only heal with time.

Best form of humor is to make yourself the center of humor. Nobody is going to
feel hurt if you do that. Some of your near and dear ones may get upset with
you for making fun of yourselves. Other than that, it is pretty harmless. If
you have some idiosyncrasy or a drawback or a handicap, is it not a good idea
to bare it open rather than someone speculate and make fun of you in your
back? We have to make sure that we do not take it to extreme and keep
deprecating ourselves on even things that people won't even notice.

One of the best things I had read somewhere was - once a person going to the
interview got soaking wet when rains started unexpectedly. It was not
possible to go back to get alternate set of clothes. It was a very
important interview too. He showed up and said, "nature probably thought I
needed another shower before the interview. I really did not but did not
have a choice.". That's the spirit.

"It is better to make fun of ourselves and rather than let others do it." In certain
societies, humor can be very personally attacking. Making fun of ourselves
when we find ourselves in the midst of a group in which we know there is
at least one person who can use humor to attack us personally, we may want to
crack one or two jokes about ourselves thus taking away any ammunition from
that person. After that, chances are, other people will shut that person up
when he tries take jab at you.

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