And now on to Kierkegaard The piece I read for this post cracked me up because the bulk of the piece is a foot note. That's not the point, but as an English major, I thought that had to be pointed out as just too funny. What Kierkegaard is saying in this piece is that basically any situation can be funny depending on the perception of the outcome. If you can see a way out the situation you can see the humor in it, but if you are wallowing without a light at the end of the tunnel, the situation becomes tragic. Hence the theater masks.

To be honest it sound so much like finding the humor in a really bad day, after the fact. I have had such horrible strings of events that I feel like crying when I'm in the middle of it. But often when I get home, ready to complain, my husband will have made me dinner, or my kid uses the same dramatic tone to tell me how she killed her ladybug friend accidentally. And when I start to tell the story of my bad day, it becomes a mini comedy routine, because I know that when I get home at the end it's all okay. Suddenly the fact that despite my best efforts I got lunch down the front of my shirt, and the three attempts to get the printer to work right are straight out of a sitcom. Perhaps that's also just how I deal with things, but I think it fits the distinction that Kierkegaard is making. The humor comes from a certainty that somehow things will work out.