I ran across this quotation some time ago from Alan Simpson’s eulogy for George H.W. Bush at Washington National Cathedral in an op-ed piece by Bret Stephens in the New York Times (12-7-18):

“He never lost his sense of humor,” the former senator from Wyoming said of his friend of more than 50 years. “Humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life. That’s what humor is. He never hated anyone. He knew what his mother and my mother always knew: hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in” (emphases mine).

While taking nothing away from the focus of this excerpt on the life of former President Bush, it struck me as a” quotable quote,” both for its creative and articulate characterizations of humor and hatred and for its profound timeliness and timelessness.  Used thoughtfully and appropriately, humor can be a welcome “icebreaker” in an awkward setting, a needed stress-reliever in a tense conversation, a comforting remembrance in the midst of grief of a laugh shared with a deceased friend or loved one, or just a “belly laugh escape” from the pressures of everyday life.  I resonated with this definition of humor and I expect that it will always color the way I experience it in others and use it myself.

I was both captivated and chastened by his description of hatred. As my son said in response to it, “There are too many ‘containers’ walking around in this world.”  He is right, of course.  There is much happening in our world that is easy to hate and it is often difficult to distinguish between hating the “act” and hating the “actor.” I fear that the ability to distinguish between “disapproval” and “hatred” is becoming a lost art and that those of us who are unable or unwilling to choose the former over the latter will be the “containers” who are the losers, as will the world we live in. 

And, of course, beyond the need just to avoid hatred, there is Jesus’ difficult and inconvenient saying that we should “love one another” and, to put an even finer point on it, “to love our neighbors as ourselves.” My sister (who lives in Tulsa, OK) and I, in one of our bi-weekly Sunday evening conversations, were talking about this very thing with regard, in particular, to some demanding and abrasive people in her life and how difficult it was to feel love for them.  I understand and share the challenge of loving some people in my world, as well. My “take” on the problem—hoping I am neither sidestepping it or engaging in casuistry—is that love is more than, indeed largely different from, simply a “feeling.” Love is an actionable decision to will the good for another person, whether we like them or not and even when “the good,” in our judgment, may involve life changes for that person. So the command to love my neighbor as myself is not a mandate to like them, given the fact that although I clearly love myself—wish the good, the best, for myself—sometimes I don’t like myself very much.

May humor continue to triumph over the abrasive elements of life, as disapproval overcomes hatred, and loving prevails over liking.