Tapping Back into Laughter After Vision Loss

0:01-:When dealing with any challenge, including vision loss, humor can be an essential tool in the toolbox. But what if you're struggling to find anything funny in your situation? In this episode, John Hewitt joins us as we discuss ways to develop and use humor in reframing challenges. I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents. Welcome to the show, John. So great to have you. Great to be had. Yes, indeed. So we are going to have lots of fun. One would hope so, in an episode, talking about humor, it really is awesome to have you here.

0:42We kind of discovered you because you wrote an email in response to a previous podcast, and we like nothing better than feedback and flattery. So we reached out to you after that and just had a great conversation. But since our listeners weren't involved in that part of it, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about who you are and just a bit of background.

1:06-:So yeah, I, I lost my vision in my right eye at the end of 2023, and was fortunate enough to be able to retire at that point. And the doctors at Vanderbilt did all these MRI scans and everything, figure out what's going on. And they said, well, the good news is you, you have kind of a brain and there's no brain tumor or anything going on. But the bad news is we don't know why. Your optic nerve decided that it was time to retire in your right eye.

1:33So your vision in your left eye could pla a day or it could either the rest of your life. We have no idea. So I decided to retire, and then the vision in my left eye went out in January of 2025. For the most part, I still have some light perception in that eye that helps me get around the neighborhood. Like I can see the street different from the ground and I use my cane to catch the curb. But I found that my sense of humor that develops over my lifetime really came in handy with what was going on with me, with losing my vision.

2:04I was started out with youth ministry when I was young that their motto was, it's a sinbo kid. And boy, we were, we were really good at not boring kids. One of my first jobs was working in Anne Rental County, Maryland. Shout out to Minneapolis folks out there. But working at going out into elementary schools and high schools and talking about, you know, drugs are serious issue. What they do to families, what they do to our lives are serious. But the, the point about humor is that it's not that blindness is funny or disabilities are funny, but we're funny being human.

2:38The human condition is ripe for humor. And what I found is that when I would introduce things, you know, I, I was willing to be silly and funny with kids and they really appreciate it. Like I did these high school assemblies about drugs. You can imagine they're so excited to hear your perspective. Well, tell me old man, what do you have to say to us children? You know? But I would start out just making fun of drug prevention speakers in general. And it went over really well.

3:06And I used a lot of stories that were funny at first and pretty gross. You know, speaking to kids, you better have some gross, especially high school kids. 'cause they remember that. And even in my work for the Crisis Intervention center here in town, I was the outreach director for a couple years and I had to do a lot of suicide prevention talks. And like, well man, you can't you be funny with that. Well, you know, suicide, you're talking about emotions.

3:30And I have a great story about emotions that I would lead with that. You know what, I'm gonna treat you to that right now. So Ricky, did you ever experience the movie Titanic?

3:41-:Yes. Okay. So back in the day, I went to see the movie Titanic with More because my wife wanted to go and I especially wanted to support her 'cause she's a nurse, hospice nurse, oncology nurse, all the things. And I thought, I better go to this movie just to be there for her. 'cause this is gonna melt her. I mean, this is an emotional, you know, I'm gonna be there to support her. But I thought told myself, you know, I'm a man now. I'm going to this movie. And as a man, I can't, what You can't cry.

4:10You can't show emotion. That's

4:11-:Right Rick. No crying, no cry. You gotta support the man card, the brand, you gotta support the brand. All those things. So I told myself I wasn't gonna cry then in the movie and the ship goes down, you know what's gonna happen. But then they put these little scenes in there, they put a scene where an older man and woman or plus each other as the water's rising in the room. I'm like, whew. Right. And that got me a little bit, there were some unidentified moisture, a UMO an an unidentified moisture object in my left eye that I wiped away real quick.

4:40And I did the flexing. I flexed my packs, did the deep breath. Okay, I'm good, I'm good. And then there's another scene in which there's a lady putting her baby to sleep as the water's rising in the room and you're like, holy. 'cause I had two young daughters at the time, Then I had unidentified moisture coming out of both eyes. And that took a lot of work to get over that. But I stabilized. I was okay. I didn't look at my wife just looking at her.

5:04And that scene would've just, you know, made her cry. And controllably, I'm sure. But I, you know, focused. I'm good, I'm back. I'm strong. And then there's a scene on the outside of the boat where a man takes a little girl and he puts her in the boat to be with her mother. And the little girl looks up at the mom and goes, mommy, how come daddy's not getting in the boat? And that father looks, he goes, oh sweetheart, there's another boat for daddy.

5:27That was it. It was over. I was sobbing. I mean, sobbing like a real man, just buckets, you know, water coming out. And I actually yelled at the screen, you're a liar. There is no other vote for daddies. And I'm a wreck. And I was like that. And I thought, you know, my poor wife, she must be on the floor. Oh my. You know, she's so empathetic. She's so caring. She's, she's out. It's like, I'm like, yeah, I better check in on her. I look over at her and she's not doing anything.

5:56-:She's, she's fine. She's, She's not crying. She, she looks at me, she does a double take. And she goes, why are you crying? And I'm like, why are you crying? And then she goes, very matter of factly. She goes, well, you know, if that's me, I'm on the light boat, I'm fine. I'm okay. Oh my word. But I would always, I'd tell that story, Dawn and everybody would laugh and they get it. And it was a great opening to how we deal with emotions. But I found that laughter, humor in that moment really helped people get to that point.

6:27It's a tool you can use in different situations.

6:30-:Yes. And that's a question that I had actually was we think about laughing and it's like, oh yeah, laughter's the best medicine. We always hear that. And just like, yeah, it feels good. And I don't think we really stop to consider any deeper than that. But I think laughter does serve a lot of different purposes, right? Humor can be used in so many different ways. And I think one of those is to help you tap into emotions that otherwise you're just not gonna open that door.

7:11Right. So are there other things that humor can do that can help in these situations?

7:18-:Oh, absolutely. I've got so many stories, you know, where humor just reframed a situation. I was a hospice volunteer coordinator for a while, and I'll never forget walking out of a patient's room with a, with a new volunteer that just, and she we're walking down the hallway, she stopped me. She goes, Hey, are, are we supposed to have that much fun with people? And Ricky, I, I stopped in the hallway and I'm like, well, you know, it just was so natural to me.

7:44This is what you do. You go in, you chat somebody up, you're, you're not of their family member. You, you don't know them that well. And they, lemme tell you, 99% of hospice patients do not want you to be sad and somber when you walk in the room. There's enough of that going around. They want you to treat 'em just like a regular person. And most people, if you come to visit me, I want you to be fun.

8:06-:Right? Right. I want you to lift my spirits. You don't have to be miss Mrs. Comedian or whatever. I don't expect that. But, and here's the thing about the humor. You know, the funniest thing in the world is you. And if you can get your own ego out of the way and be willing to let someone chuckle at you a little bit, tell a little funny story about yourself. I got lost on the way over here. I, whatever the thing is, right? If we can get our own ego outta the way, it's so powerful.

8:32'cause it helps other people and it really helps ourselves. And what I had learned is I had to teach my hospice volunteers how to use that, how to flex that sense of humor. And again, not developing into a comedian or anything, but just learning what was ironic, what was funny, going back to the medical folks, I asked this nurse, I could just tell she had full of life and I knew she had used some humor with people to help 'em. And she was working for a radiation oncologist, and radiation therapy's tough.

9:02So she told me, oh, John, I, I did this thing the other day. People had come into the waiting room and this one lady, especially that she knew was kind of down, but, you know, more so than usual. And so this nurse Tara, she's just, oh honey, how are you doing today? Now she's shouting across a waiting room with like 30 people in it. You know, this lady sits down at the far end, the lady just looks down and says, you really wanna know? And Tara goes, oh sweetheart. Yes honey.

9:30Oh, please, please tell me. And the lady goes, I just want to have sex. And Tara falls a beach. She just goes with me. And Tara said, oh, John, the place just erupted in laughter. Oh, you, there's 30 people in there. The patient's laughing, I'm laughing, everybody's laughing. The doctor actually came out to see what was going on. You know, era helping that lady laugh. It did not change her treatment regimen. It didn't change her prognosis, but as sure as heck changed the window out of which she was looking that day.

10:04Right. It reframed. And actually, you know, I looked this up. Some therapists use humor, especially as part of the cognitive behavioral therapy to help patients reframe situations. They, they keep a humor journal kind of lifting their spirits, and it reframes, it gets 'em around some of the negative thinking that they do. Or if they're anxious or depressed about a certain situation, they're worried about an outcome. What the therapists 'em do is just take that to the extreme, you know, you're worried about a thing and then, okay, the world's gonna, you know, juxtaposition.

10:35And that's, that's the thing about humor. And I realized that to someone like me, irony just comes naturally. When I was sighted, I did a lot of hiking, backpacking, and you'd come across like a sign that said, scenic view.

10:50-:What does that mean? Right? If you can read the sign, do you not know it's scenic? I mean, for you to tell me it's scenic, you know, I'm gonna decide. You know, I just thought that was, that was crazy. And I thought two things. One, boy, there's a lot of people that need to develop their sense of irony. The second thing is, there may have been people that thought that was funny, but they did not choose to use it. You think that's because like you have to approach certain things with, okay, I have to put my serious face on.

11:20Do we do that too often?

11:22-:Yes, I think we do. 'cause we presuppose that it's not appropriate in this situation. Now, there are, obviously, there are situations in which it's, which it's not appropriate, you know, humor when it's used to deflect the emotional things that you have to get to. Like, I've had some people in the buying community, you know, John, I, you use a lot of humor about being blind. You tell all these funny stories about things that happened to you being blind and re people's reactions to you and that kind of thing.

11:47But are you appropriately grieving? And I said, oh, yeah. Oh, buddy, I, you know, that's the side of me. You don't see though, unless you ask me. You know, like the first time I'm sitting down at dinner with my family, with my daughters and my granddaughter and my son-in-laws, and I realized I'll never see their faces again. Now that, that hit me hard. But I didn't react right away until later when I sat down in bed, I, I had me a good cry about all the things that I'm grieving.

12:13So it, you know, humor's not meant to deflect that there is a tool sometimes to be used to help you. And in the blind world, it's just really powerful, really powerful tool. For example, you know what happens to me a lot of times being blind, is that people grab me. I mean, we've all had this experience, right?

12:32-:Oh yeah. Too many times, Right? People grab you, you know, I'm walking down the hallway at the Y and somebody grabs me. And you have to be careful how you react because they want to help you, right? And so might be a thing where you can engage 'em in conversation. Now, what I do when somebody grabs me like that, instead of pushing away or making it clear that they have really overstepped the bounds, I go, Hey, hey, hey, this show's not free baby.

12:55What are we doing here? You know? Right. They oh, oh, they laugh and you, you, you can talk to 'em about the appropriate ways to interact and it diffuses the situation. It really helps to use humor in a lot of those situations to help us, again, like I say, diffuse, but also teach.

13:10-:Yeah, it's a great point. Put, put people at ease. You know, if they're uncomfortable with you and you show that you can laugh, then it helps open the door to that emotion. Okay, now we can relate as opposed to, I don't know anything about you and I'm feeling very uncomfortable and I'm afraid I'm going to say something wrong. Yes. And, and in our own journey, you know, some think about all the things that keep us blind. People from living a life we wanna live.

13:43A lot of times it's our own ego. They don't wanna identify as bond. What's that about? What's about ego? That if you can laugh at that ego, if you can get that stupid thing out of the way, you know, in my own, and the thing is, the, the ironic thing is I don't employ that sense. If you were myself, often enough, so many times I'll get mad at something if I could just take, take a step back. Who do you think you are? You think you don't have to work at this.

14:06-:Right? Right. I, I remember I was my first big blind meeting with the National Federation of Blind here, here in Middle Tennessee. You know, a driver picked me up and got me into the meeting and sat me down. And he wasn't gonna come pick me up until about 10, 15 minutes after the meeting's over because I wanted to talk to some people, the meeting's over. And I'm sitting there thinking, they don't know I wanna talk to them. What am I gonna do? I, I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to get up and yell.

14:30How else would they know? That's awkward? Well, you know, I'm thinking, well, I don't want to be seen. I'm like, dude, you're with a bunch of blind people. They are not gonna freaking care. Right? So, but it was awkward. I had to think it through. I'm, who am I arguing with? I'm arguing with myself, right? That's, so I get up and I go, James and somebody over there, and James comes to the sound of my voice. And then I realized I gotta whack up. You know, I have one of those titanium canes.

14:55'cause I can put my weight on it, it's great. And so I'm, you know, whacking people, whacking the desk. And you know, my wife said the first time she came to one of those meetings, she goes, oh my God, you blind people are so funny. You're just running into each other. And everybody's laughing and

15:08-:Absolutely Right because we're all doing it. And I said, but to get to that point where you're free to do that, you know, you have to laugh at yourself. The first time I used be My Eyes, I was, I was getting my hiking shoes in the garage, couldn't find 'em. I'm like, dude, you're not gonna find 'em with your, you know, with your cane call, be my eyes volunteer. And then I'm arguing with myself, oh, I don't want to do that. Why didn't you wanna do that?

15:30Well, I don't wanna bother somebody. Why don't you wanna bother somebody? This is what they do. They signed up for this. What's happening here? It is my own ego. I didn't wanna admit I needed some help, but I sat down and thought about it later. It's like, why was I so reluctant to do that? And it's because, well, I'm projecting my own ego into that moment. You know, my own identity is at stake here. And why is that? So humor can really help you reflect on some pretty, pretty interesting things that will help change the way you frame what you're doing and how you're doing it.

16:02And also Ricky and our world, just as a general sense, the more that you can learn to laugh at some of these things and develop your sense of irony, the more you can do that, the more fun you are to be around. I can't emphasize that enough.

16:16-:So how can you do that for people like us? When I'm happy I laugh. When I'm upset, I'm trying to laugh and deflect. When I am annoyed, I try to find something to laugh about. So it's kind of the first thing that I turn to. And for you, it seems similar, we might not always get there immediately, but it's, it's in the top row of those tools in our toolbox. But for some people, maybe they feel like they're not naturally wired like that. So if you're not thinking of yourself as the class clown or whatever, then how do you go about kind of developing that irony or that humor or that ability to look at things in a humorous way?

17:01-:Yeah, I, I understand you can develop your sense of irony, your sense. The the little acronym I came up with was Lie, I want you to Lie, Ricky. All right then. Okay. And the L stands for laugh. And the first thing is to laugh for yourself. You know, use a humor journal to think about what makes you laugh. When I, when I did my workshop for medical social workers, I would tell 'em to reflect and think on a story that they laughed at. There's something that made 'em laugh, write it down, or make a note of it.

17:29Or use your A notes app on your phone or whatever the technology. But think about what made you laugh recently and why, why was that funny to you? Why did that, what happened was the story about yourself or someone else? Whatever it was or something you saw that was ironic. All right. And by the way, irony is, is the part of that lie. So what, the juxtaposition of two things, right? The, you know, I mentioned that scenic view. So one, one tool here for irony is think about all the things that, you know, what would be ironic about that?

18:04What would change that up? For example, come up with a list. Like one of the things we're a little competition if you're think in our church while memorizing the beatitudes, right? And I started thinking, oh, there's no more source of irony. Think about all like the be blind attitudinals, you know, like blessed are you, when people grab you out of the dark and think that you are a helpless blind person and you correct their air by smiting them with your titanium cane.

18:35I mean, it's just endless. Right?

18:37-:Or the braille sign that says don't touch. Right, exactly. Warning you. Yeah. Like beautiful, Beautiful example right there. But you can do this on your own, you know, like I heard this blind comedian once had a list of 10 great things about being blind. And the first one is, you don't have to worry about being a designated driver. So what, you know, come up with your own list. 10 great things about being blind, whatever that is. And that exercise in and of itself, you know, finding the irony, putting those lists together, thinking of those funny things that have happened to you.

19:10And the last part of that lie is embellish. Take one of the stories, something's happened to you. Something that you tell about yourself a lot to explain yourself to other people. You know, you take a story and you embellish it, right? And you do this as an exercise. And again, it's not like you're, you don't have to be getting up on stage and telling it to a room to make 'em laugh. It's just like, you can use that when you're talking with friends to take a story to that level, to exaggerate, embellish it.

19:37It's, it's okay to laugh at ourselves even though we're trying to be super confident and all that. You know, if you could just laugh at yourself a little bit, it reframes it, right? Let's just go out and fail.

19:49-:And it does help, I think, to take the ego out of it. If you can not just tell the story as it happened, but to embellish it a little more, now you are seeing the ridiculousness in the situation and taking it to that next level. Absolutely. Or think about, you know, another way to use this is you, you're going down the hallway at my favorite place, the Y, and you're tapping your cane so that people can hear, you know, 'cause a lot of times in a place like the Y people are in little conversation groups, you know, they run into a ferran and they go to the side of the hallway and they're so engrossed in conversation, they don't see you.

20:27Or even if you're tapping, even hear you sometimes, you know, I've run into them a couple times and, oh sorry, you know, I thought, well, gosh, what would be funny to say there? You know, if a certain group of people you could say, oh, I'm sorry I, all I can see is how wonderful you are, you know, or, or excuse me, you're in my blind zone, you know? But try to think, what would be funny to say? You know, what would be funny for you to say at that time to help diffuse the situation?

20:54Or you know, so anyway, that acronym, you know, learn to laugh at yourself. What's funny to you? Keep a journal, I, where's the irony in things? Come up with a list of stuff and then, and then see what would be ironic or funny in that list, or the 10 greatest things about being blind. What are they to you? The, and then imbalance, take that story and just ratchet it up.

21:15-:I love it. It's really good advice. And it's a way that whether you're already thinking about what is funny in everyday life or you don't traditionally turn your mind in that direction, it's still like a concrete exercise that you can do to think about it and reframe things a little differently. So I've been blind for a long time and I feel like I have heard every blind joke there is. And I've probably told most of them. And there are some things that the first time you hear it, it's kind of funny and you have a chuckle.

21:54Second time you hear it, you might chuckle, but a little bit less. Do you have any thoughts about when people who are around you and they're trying to use humor to diffuse the situation, but it gets to a point where it's like, you know, maybe I say, oh, I'm watching a really good series right now, but are you though? Are you really? Yeah. You know?

22:20-:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have thoughts about how to approach that? Where you're saying, I still want you to be able to laugh with me. I find this funny. That particular joke though, enough, You know, that depends on how well you know the people that are doing it. Because, 'cause you know, like with my mostly guy friends, one of the reasons we like being around each other is we can be extremely sarcastic with each other. One of my good friends, when I first, right, you know, like a week after I'd lost my vision, I had some old friends come by and one guy leaned into me, he goes, man, I bet you didn't see this coming, did you?

22:57It made me laugh so hard. Oh my word. So if you have friends like that, you can lean into 'em pretty hard. But you do have to signal to some people, you know, because it's typical. 'cause one of the things you want to get across is, look, yeah, I'm blind, but I, I just want to hang

23:13-:Exactly. Just Treat me like a regular person. Right? So yeah, you do have to communicate that gently with people To someone like you, Ricky, you've got a great sense of humor. You use it often. So they're, they may be thinking, you always wanna laugh or chuckle about stuff. And it's interesting that people don't read the room. I mean, they can see the expression on your face. They can read you a little bit. So you gotta let 'em know a little bit.

23:35Sometimes you have to lean into that about how you're feeling.

23:39-:Yeah. Sometimes it is about advocating for yourself even when it's uncomfortable. And maybe you step back and think of a way to, like you said, advocate with humor. Hey, come on, get some new material. Absolutely. Yeah. And again, the more you can do that with a little humor, it's a little sugar. Yes. In the medicine, if you will. So people are funny. And I think that's the thing is that sometimes we have to laugh at the situation. And I think there are a lot of situations that we will encounter where someone says something that is so thoughtless or just out there that is not in any way associated with the reality you are living in.

24:25There's where you employ that irony, right?

24:28-:Oh, absolutely. The other thing too, I would always stress in workshops, I said, look, there are times you're gonna try and make someone laugh and it's not gonna go, it's not gonna work. And either they, they might be offended some kind of way 'cause you don't know their context what's going on, or it just wasn't funny in the moment. Just wink at 'em and say, Hey, it's just trying to make you laugh, man. Sorry, you know, you do that, you'll cover a lot of bases.

24:51And so in a lot of ways humor can, can rock our will, lift our spirits, help us see the world through a different lens, help us tackle difficult emotional challenges that we're not willing to do, and just be more fun to be around, more fun to be with. And again, it's not the only tool in the toolbox. And I would stress this with my volunteers at in hospice and other places. It's not, but it's, it's just a tool that I saw so many people not use when they could have.

25:15-:Right? Yeah. It's important to know it's there and when and how to use it. Absolutely. Yeah. And you can further develop your own. So you may not think of yourself as someone that can figure out what's funny in the moment or what would be ironic or whatever, but you can work on that. Well, I really love the tips that you gave to make a list of the things that have made you laugh. Because understanding that can help you understand parts about yourself and what you find funny in life.

25:50And once you figure out what that is, it helps you start thinking in that direction. This has been so much fun. I knew it would be, I feel like we could trade stories all day. And if you are listening to this and you are hoping for some examples of humorous stories like wearing mismatching shoes and the like, we do have some podcasts on just some funny blinder, low vision bloopers that we have shared with each other and other people have shared as well.

26:23So we'll have those in the show notes too. John, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to share some stories, have a couple of laughs and give us some tips on how to keep doing that.

26:35-:Oh, it's been my pleasure. And I know there's people out there listening thinking, man, I'm funnier than that guy. How come I'm not on the show? Well, I hope you contact Hadley with your own stories and the ways that humor has helped you. Yes. We would love to hear from you. Thank you, John. It's been a pleasure. And thank you all so much for listening. Got something to say? Share your thoughts about this episode of Hadley Presents, or make suggestions for future episodes.

27:04We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at [email protected]. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T at HadleyHelps.org or leave us a message at 847-784-2870. Thanks for listening.