Words of Wisdom

Dr Seuss famously wrote in his lesser known, yet seminal work ‘There’s a Weeveleys in my Cleveleys’:

"You’ll feel you’re on high, way up in the sky
and you’ll never come down when in Cleveleys town!
But you’ll land with a thump and end up in a grump
feeling ever so glum if you go to Bispham"

These words have become something of a mantra for Cleveleys children who grew up in less complex times, guiding them through life. Sure there’s self-help books for adults such as ‘Stagnate & stay in Cleveleys’, or ‘Men are from Earth, and so are Women’, but when you hit one of life’s difficult moments you can’t beat the simple wisdom of Seuss – sometimes life is great, but sometimes it isn’t. 

Also avoid going to Bispham wherever possible.

Sometimes though, feeling a bit ‘glum’ is a whopping great understatement - when life throws you something so gut-wrenchingly awful that you struggle to eat or sleep, you have that hollow void in your stomach day and night, it becomes hard to talk to people, and even watching TV or listening to music makes you feel guilty because entertaining yourself at a time when you ought to be miserable makes you feel like you’re a terrible person. If you have never experienced this, it is rather like that hollow, empty feeling of hopelessness that you get when walking around Home Bargains on a Saturday, only a million times worse.

Actually, we don’t think that smiling, joking or even laughing while going through a difficult time makes you a bad person at all. In fact it can really help you get through. Humour is not just a ‘coping mechanism’; it is a natural human emotion. Some experts assert that you cannot feel stress, depression, or guilt at the same time as you experience humour. Yes, you can rapidly oscillate between the two - a burst of laughter, a sorry sniff, followed by another laugh, then a tear, and so on; but you can’t do both at once just like you cannot hiccup and cough at the same time. The hiccup temporarily interrupts the cough, and anyone who uses the portmanteau ‘hiccough’ needs a stiff dressing-down.

We hope all our dear readers and supporters of Cleveleys News are happy and well at this time. But if for any reason you’re not, please hold on. You will get through it. Good humour can sometimes help you get through. You can’t always laugh at the situation you are in – some things just aren’t at all funny. But don’t switch off your good humour, it is part of you, and as you go about the business of picking up the pieces of your life you will spot everyday things that make you feel a tiny bit brighter. You may even smile, possibly snigger. At a push you might even LOL.

Can you imagine a person entirely without humour? Someone who is serious all the time without a break? What would happen if such a person were to write songs? They would be a barrage of dreary, pretentious, pompous, pseudo-meaningful, conventional stodge. Yes, Coldplay. There’s a reason they make great ‘background’ music – nobody wants it in the foreground.

The greatest artists make good use of light and shade. The greatest songs are both moving, and upbeat. The best dramas have a bit of humour in them. The best comedies are capable of making you cry.

So don’t beat yourself up for trying to keep in good spirits through a difficult time in your life. It’s a sign that you’re human, and that all your faculties are still working.

To end this slightly more poignant than usual blog post, I’ll leave you with a few more wise words from Dr Seuss which remind us that whatever it is we are going through, there is always hope.

"And when you’re in Bispham you may start to wish
that you were in fact anywhere on earth else but this!
But that is a foolish thought you must dismiss,
For you could be in Fleetwood, stinking of fish" - Dr Seuss