Faith and Laughter: A Worldview
People often ask me, “How do you stay so positive with all your illnesses?” That’s a very complex question and I engage in at least ten mental health coping mechanisms every day and depression/bipolar mood tracker apps help me maintain my coping mechanisms. But, the other day, I saw a video with late-night host Stephen Colbert. In the clip below, he eloquently summed up my overall worldview after singer, Dua Lipa, asked Colbert, “I think that something that your viewers really connect with…especially in the past few years is how open and honest and authentic you are about the role your faith plays in your life. And I was wondering: Does your faith and your comedy ever overlap?..” Colbert’s answer begins around 4:17.
Colbert’s answer really spoke to me as a person of faith and as a person who, no matter how bad things get, commits to laugh at least once a day. As an example, this is an article I wrote a long time ago called, “How to Vacationize Your Hospital Visit or Stay.” I can’t believe this website, Fashionably ill ®, is approaching its ten-year anniversary. This website and my YouTube channel are full of articles and videos that when taken collectively spell out the picture of HOW I hold on despite the pain, fatigue, and the multitude of challenges that come with having a handful of chronic illnesses poses. But, Colbert answered the WHY part of the question. If I had to get into more specifics about how I feel about suffering in the grand scheme of eternity, this book Kingdom Come by Allen Wakabayashi, comes closest to my view. But Colbert gave the best short answer to the why.
