I attended a funeral earlier today, a friend’s mother who died earlier this week at 91. There were several family tributes, with an emphasis on humor.

The woman was a Christian, so the family knows where she is now. I think it is fair to say that there was sadness, but not sorrow. They know they will see her again.

The line that stuck with me the most was shared by one of her sons-in-law. He said in a recent conversation he had commented that living as long as the woman had must be sad in a way, because she had outlived most of her friends.

Her response? “Yes, but now there’s a lot less peer pressure.”

Peer pressure is something we tend to associate with youth, but I guess it happens at every age. Thinking about it a bit this afternoon, I wonder if perhaps there is more than ever before. If you are online, as anyone reading this is, there is a lot of pressure to conform to societal norms. Even if they aren’t necessarily good ones.

And when you look at peer pressure, there is very little humor. We take ourselves much too seriously.

I hope that. like her, I can keep my sense of humor as I get older. Then again, I already have friends and family members who gently suggest I have already lost that sense of humor, if indeed I ever had one. Sometimes they aren’t all that gentle with the suggestions.

Even more than maintaining a sense of humor, I hope I can resist the pressure to conform to the crowd when the crowd is wrong. I wish the same for you.