I returned from my three-week trip in Japan to Israel this Tuesday night. I was shocked to discover upon my return here that I couldn't smile or laugh naturally. My facial muscles seem to have become frozen for lack of use for the last two weeks of my stay in Japan. The last time I really laughed was when I gave two talks in Kobe and Tokyo on the first week of my trip; I laughed a lot when I made humorous comments spontaneously.
I was very careful to continue my daily physical workouts, including bodyweight strength training, running and yoga to maintain my muscle strength, stamina and flexibility respectively during this trip as in all the previous trips abroad. But I totally forgot that facial muscles could also lose their strength for lack of use, and even after such a short period of time at that.
Since my return to Jerusalem I've been making a conscious effort to meet as many friends and acquaintances of mine here with the same sense of humor and shmooze with them as much as possible so that I may laugh and thus rehabilitate my frozen facial muscles. I think I can smile and laugh naturally now.
My occupation with Yiddish and my continued use of it seem to have had a decisive effect upon the way I communicate - I've incorporated Yiddish sense of humor in whatever language I speak, including not only Yiddish, Hebrew and Jewish English, which are friendly to Yiddish humor, but also Esperanto and Japanese, whose average speakers often seem to have a rather hard time understanding it. I've come to find it more and more difficult to communicate with people with little or no sense of humor, be it Yiddish or not.
Though I couldn't laugh in the last two weeks of my stay in Japan as I'm used to here in Jerusalem, I had a pleasant surprise of seeing more poeple in Japan who seem to understand my Yiddish sense of humor than I had expected though few of them really laughed. On the other hand, I've rediscoved that there seem to be far more people here in Israel than I remembered by mistake who seem to have little or no sense of humor. These people even scare me.
These unexpected experiences have rekindled my interest in humor in general and Yiddish humor in particular. I've started reading both theoretical and practical books about using humor to maximize living and life coaching. What I've (re)discovered so far is that there is far more than just being funny in humor.