[Photo by: Helga Weber]

Wikipedia defines an “In-joke” as a joke whose humor is clear only to those people who are “inside” a social group or occupation; an esoteric joke.

Everyone has a bunch of inside jokes. Ones shared with family. Ones shared with friends. Ones shared with the significant other. Ones shared with colleagues, and so on and so forth. Usually a long list of internal jokes.

There are several “bonuses” in inside jokes, which are usually overlooked:

1. Inside jokes are usually making you genuinely happy, whenever you hear them.
2. Inside jokes make you feel connected to a certain group or a single person you share the joke with.
3. Last, but not least, inside jokes has the ability to bring you back in time and evoke memories of when and how the joke was “born”.

Therefore I suggest in this week’s journaling prompt to start putting those in-jokes in writing.

Write down a list of inside jokes and the group of people or the person you share the jokes with.

I guarantee that every time you will look at the list, you are going to – at the very least – smile, if not laugh uncontrollably, and also bring up scenes of pleasure in your mind.

You will bring up the time the joke was created, perhaps late at night, after a couple drinks and a good movie. You will bring up scenes of you snorting juice when a friend mentioned this joke. It will bring up faces of people you care about. It will bring up times when you were happy and laughing and in a good mood.

The list has a pretty good chance to elevate your mood, each and every time you go over it.

Obviously there is no point in sharing an internal joke of mine… but I do urge you to list yours for keepsake.

Share –

Have you listed some of your inside jokes?
Who do you share most in-jokes with?

I’d love to hear from you, so leave a comment on this post 🙂