Safety Laughter

It's been said before, being happy makes us healthy.

But we do tend to laugh at the misfortunes of others.

We have a natural tendency to Schadenfreude, but more than that we enjoy comedy which employs physical humour.   Jim Carrey movies are one example.  But we can go right back to the slapstick of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

Maudlin mayhem for others, makes us merry.

Now if we prepare to talk about safety, we forget all that, and we get deadly serious.

We expound and propound over spreadsheets and charts.  We bore into our audience boringly.  Because we take safety seriously.

However by taking safety seriously, are we doing less than our best?

In Safety it's survival of the fittest, and that fittest is who can learn and teach safety the best.

We have the Darwin Awards as an internet commentary on odd deaths and how various people achieved their fifteen minutes of fame, by improving the gene pool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

and

http://www.darwinawards.com/

 These tongue in cheek awards show again our morbidly humorous interest in safety, or its lack thereof.

If you want people to open their eyes and minds to your safety presentations, make them laugh.

A visual of an outrageous safety situation can help.

A short talk about one's personal experience can help especially if one can laugh at oneself.  It helps show that we all make mistakes, and accepting that helps us improve safety.  Otherwise we move too easily into a blame and shame game.

Here are some helpful pictures...

http://www.safetyrisk.net/funny-safety-fail-photos/

 Try not to create too many funny safety stories.  

 We want to be alive to enjoy them.

Being happy is why we chase safety, it is why we pursue that goal of zero harm.

If we take it too seriously, we burn out, we are setting ourselves up to fail, it's not possible for anyone to save everyone else.  People will get injured, there will be bad times.  A sense of humor is vital, so that we find the energy to get through roadblocks and setbacks.

Or as Jimmy Durante put it...

It dawned on me then that as long as I could laugh, I was safe from the world; and I have learned since that laughter keeps me safe from myself, too.

                       -Jimmy Durante

Take care out there.