During a recent trip to Europe, I spent some time in Budapest, Hungary.  I enjoyed visiting this historic city and particularly liked being in a place that has a language that is new to me in every way.  Looking at letters and having absolutely no idea what they mean or how to pronounce them brought to mind the challenge faced by people who don’t know how to read, or who come to a country to live without any background in that country’s language.

One of the light moments in my encounter with the Hungarian language occurred during a trip I organized for a few of us outside the city.  We began on the subway, switched to a train to the end of the line and then took a bus farther out into the countryside.  When we arrived at the end of the train line, we were surprised, as we hadn’t been told about the bus portion of the trip and were confused about how we would know where to go to return to Budapest when our excursion in the countryside was over.  Before getting on the bus, I saw a sign above the train station in two places – stark black letters on a white background – and figured it was the name of the train station. 

Later, waiting at a bus stop on a lovely country road, the first leg of our journey back to the city, I asked a young woman who spoke English whether the bus went to the station name I had written down .  The young woman looked at the word and was quiet for a few moments.  When I asked again, her mouth twitched, as she was apparently trying not to laugh.  Very gently, she looked at me and said, “The word you have written down means ‘advertisement.”  Wow, did we all begin to laugh!  Here I was, imagining that I had it all in hand, having written down this magic word, “advertisement”, as our safety net.  It was a very funny moment and I chuckle to remember it even now, especially the young woman’s momentary loss for words as she figured out how to tell me what I had done.

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to think of a time when you did something amusing, or something that made you laugh out loud – an experience that wasn’t humiliating but was truly funny.  It’s a gift to be able to laugh at ourselves, at our inevitable humanity, silliness, and inescapable ignorance about so many things.  The gift here is to have the experience of being amused with yourself without adding on anything shaming or any kind of put-down for making a mistake or not knowing something you thought you knew or understood.

Another element of the experiment might be to notice how it is to laugh with others as they laugh at themselves without judging them or bringing anything shaming into that encounter.  Laughter with ourselves and with people is a generous gift, and is so different from laughing at the expense of ourselves or others. 

As with all the experiments, enjoy playing with this one.  Laughter is good medicine, and when we can enjoy our own mistakes, we have an endless supply of healing moments.