A very close friend of mine, who's going through a tough phase in life, recently wondered when we started taking ourselves so seriously—and forgot to laugh.
It’s a good question. His musings reminded me of the Laughter, the Best Medicine section in Reader’s Digest, which used to feature clever, laugh-out-loud jokes. My parents subscribed to it, and I remember eagerly waiting for it to arrive by post.
One joke from those pages has stuck with me for years. I laughed out loud when I first read it—then immediately felt self-conscious about laughing. Here it is:
“Solution to two of the world’s biggest problems: Feed the homeless to the hungry!”
I’ve tried sharing this joke in a few different settings... but it never quite lands. Maybe people have forgotten how to laugh—or maybe it’s just too crude for the overly cautious, woke world we now live in.
Either way, I still salute the writer who came up with that line. It still makes me laugh.