Lately, people have been asking, “How do you stay positive in times like these?” I answer that I look for positive things in people and the world around me. I try not to worry about what I can’t control — which is most things. I now try to live by the credo, “If I can’t say anything nice, I won’t say anything at all.”

That last part certainly didn’t come naturally to me. I am a humorist and comedy writer, and a lot of humor is being sarcastic. (There is also a lot of humor in pain; America’s funniest videos made a fortune out of people falling and getting whacked in personal places.) I was a quiet kid in high school, but when I got to college I started to be more outgoing.

Once, in an economics class a girl (who was a 1970s “Karen”) was ranting about something she wanted the professor to do that he didn’t want to do. She went on for 15 minutes and then stormed out of........

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