Being a Brave and Wise Traveler and Laughing at Yourself

Adventure is a State of Mind

The ability to laugh at yourself can turn a potentially humiliating event into part of the fun that makes your travel adventure special and memorable.

A Story

I have a dream of one day being fluent in a foreign language… any language. I know I’ve got a long way to go, but I’ve worked hard enough at learning French that I can usually communicate and understand the basics. I’m sure I sound a bit like a young child, but usually I can at least share simple ideas productively.

I’m telling you all of this to help you understand that while I push myself to speak French when I’m in France, I’m still pretty insecure about my ability to do so. And feeling insecure leaves all of us vulnerable to embarrassment and humiliation. Hang on to that thought.

So here’s the story. I was in Paris with friends and my oldest niece. We decided that we wanted to visit Père Lachaise Cemetery. I know it sounds a little morbid, but I love cemeteries and all of the history contained within them. Père Lachaise is especially famous because of some of its long-dead inhabitants, including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, and Frederic Chopin.

There is a Père Lachaise metro stop in Paris, and it’s a big cemetery, so we all assumed it would be fairly easy to find once we took the metro from our hotel to the Père Lachaise station. Paris is actually pretty good about not only having visible street signs but also having easy-to-find signs directing visitors to historical sites and famous landmarks. All of this said, we exited the metro station and began looking for signs directing us to the cemetery… but we couldn’t find any.

I know we looked particularly lost and confused, because an elderly gentleman, slowly walking by with a cane, stopped and asked if we needed help. The following is the conversation we shared, with the translation in parentheses and my thoughts in italics:

I looked where the man directed my attention, and across the road was a wall… with numerous headstones peaking up above it. It was impossible to miss as being a cemetery. The old gentleman grinned at me, we both began laughing, and he then continued down the street, still laughing.

The Benefits of Being Able to Laugh at Yourself

Why am I telling you this story? Because it’s an example of a situation that could have been filled with embarrassment, but instead it’s one of my favorite travel stories to laugh about. Laughter really is the best medicine and takes the sting out of the embarrassing mistakes we make. Instead of continuing to worry about my imperfect French pronunciation or feeling like an idiot that I was so unobservant, I had a genuine interaction with a Frenchman that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And, I’ve gotten a great deal of laughter out of the memory.

Laughing at ourselves actually enhances our health and well-being. This is, in part, because laughter releases endorphins that reduce pain and stress-related tension. It is also because self-directed laughter reminds us of our humanity and helps us to connect with others and others to connect with us.

In the moment that the French gentleman grinned at me, we had a genuine connection built around the humor of the situation. Had I been too embarrassed to try to speak with him or so humiliated that I hadn’t noticed what was right in front of my nose and became angry at him teasing me, the opportunity for a person-to-person connection would have been lost… and I would have likely been left feeling pretty crappy. Instead, I had a smile on my face, and my traveling companions and I were all given an emotional lift from the laughter we shared.

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.

Victor Borge

It’s Not a Put Down

Laughing at yourself and the strange situations you find yourself in isn’t about criticizing yourself or putting yourself down. Instead, it’s about accepting yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. Laughing about them makes them easier to cope with.

Back to my French abilities, or lack thereof. I’ve made many, many mistakes. In fact, when it comes to learning how to speak a foreign language, the only way to improve is to be willing to look foolish as you try to say new things that your mouth and tongue and brain are not used to producing. Laughing at my mistakes means recognizing that I’m still learning, and usually people respond to my positive attitude by being patient and willing to help me learn the new words or improve my pronunciation.

Resiliency

Humor often helps us to shift our mindset to feel more empowered and resilient. When we are traveling, there are almost always things that don’t go the way we expect them to go. Sometimes these are minor inconveniences, and sometimes these are significant difficulties. Regardless, we have to deal with them, and somehow, we almost always manage to figure out a solution. Whether it’s a missed train connection, a lost passport, or a health crisis, we do what we have to do. And we feel more competent for having done so… once it’s all over, of course!

As I’ve discussed before, my first trip to Europe did not go as planned in the beginning because of weather-related flight changes, but I figured it out. And in doing so, I gained confidence that I could handle future travel, even when glitches occur. As the old saying goes, “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” If you’re laughing, you know you’re still alive!

Travel as Improv

If you’ve ever had the chance to watch improvisational theater and comedy, known as Improv, you know that it can be very clever and often hysterically funny. I used to wonder how in the world the actors came up with so many humorous situations. Then I learned that the first rule of Improv is to always respond to situations with “yes.” (See Tina Fey’s great essay on the Rules of Improvisation.) This means that the actors are agreeing to and accepting whatever their acting partners present them with. The second rule of Improv is to say “yes, and….” In other words, the actors not only accept what is given to them, they also contribute something of their own that adds to the scene.

Travel is like improv — say “yes and” to what life gives you and then contribute something of your own. Things will happen when you travel. Some of those things will be wonderful and some of those things will be challenging. You plan many of your activities, but there will always be some experiences that you can’t even imagine happening until they do. We just end up frustrated when we fight reality. Saying “yes” to a situation means acknowledging that it is what it is and accepting that reality.

The next step is figuring out what you can contribute to the situation. Rather than giving up or getting angry, what can you do to improve the situation or at least make the most of it? And just like with Improv, a lot of laughter may be the result.

Laughter is Transforming

Adventures are often found in the things that went wrong. Seriously. Think back to the stories you or your friends love to tell about your favorite trips. My guess is that many of those stories are about how you handled situations when they didn’t go as planned. If we’re lucky, sometimes those experiences ended up being even better than what we had planned. As the late painter, Bob Ross, liked to say, they’re “happy accidents.”

How are glitches and problems transformed into happy accidents and adventures? Most of the time, laughter is the magic pixie dust that changes potential negatives into positive memories. So when things aren’t going quite the way you hoped they would, look for the humor in the moment. I promise, if you can laugh at yourself, you’ll feel much better.

How can you be open to opportunities to laugh at yourself in the future? Do you have a favorite story of something that went wrong during your travel adventures that makes you crack up every time you think of it? Feel free to share it in the comments section below.