On a recent visit to the U.K. I read a wonderful article in The Guardian newspaper entitled "Why Britain is so crap."
The list began with a passionate denouncement of the carpet at Heathrow Airport, which, if you've ever seen it, you'll know is homely at best, and hallucinogenic at worst. It was a wonderful list: humorous, absurd and, paradoxically, a positive affirmation of what it is to be British.
It seems to me that more people could do with the ability not to take themselves quite so seriously. The British can be wonderfully self-deprecating. When Ricky Gervais, a British comedian, went up to receive his second Golden Globe award for his stupefyingly good television show "The Office," he dryly remarked about how the pair of them would make good bookends.
The British, or at least a lot of them, have a sort of sixth sense for the inherent surreality of life. This is why so much British humor disdains punch lines and Freudian banana slips of the tongue. They know that to take themselves too seriously is a sort of perilous defiance of gravity.
Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it. There's too much self-seriousness for my comfort in this part of the world, and an almost neurotic inability to take criticism. If you can't laugh at yourself, it's a pitiable state of affairs indeed.
