How long has it been since you laughed out loud?
I’m talking the big, carefree, embarrass-your-friends-and-family kind of belly laugh that makes you feel like a toddler caught in the middle of a playful pile of puppies. The kind that makes tears of mirth roll down your cheeks and sometimes makes you gasp for breath. The kind that makes it impossible for you to explain why you’re laughing, because every time you think about it you start laughing uncontrollably again.
If it’s been a minute—maybe it’s even been longer than a COVID-stressed year—may I encourage you to do whatever you can to bring laughter back into your life. If it’s missing, you need to find it! As Father Mulcahy might say on MASH, we need jocularity in our lives. You may be thinking that’s easier said than done, but that’s precisely why you need to let loose and laugh. There are so many benefits that laughter brings to us, both mentally and physically. At the very least, laughter can distract us from negative things—and we feel the positive effects even after we’ve stopped laughing.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, a rather too scarce a good thing.
– Herman Melville
If life has brought you to a place where you can’t remember the last time you laughed out loud, if you’re having trouble finding the inspiration to laugh, here are some solid reasons that you should seek out laughter, even when you don’t feel like it.
Laughter is the opposite of the stress response. It triggers the release of endorphins and dopamine, hormones that literally make you feel good. It aids in mental health and stress relief, but it does much more than that. Laughter has healing properties. And the cool thing is that even simulated laughter brings positive results. So you can “fake it till you make it!”
Works for me!
In my post, Cancer Part 1–Diagnosis, I talked about how author Norman Cousins influenced my intentional focus on laughing when I had cancer. I had heard his story decades before about how laughter and positivity played a huge part in his healing from serious disease. He said, “Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bulletproof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease.” Centuries before this guy, the French philosopher Voltaire said, “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” Doctors recognize this healing aspect of laughter. Because it gives the body a full workout, Cousins called a big belly laugh “inner jogging.” So much more fun than actual jogging, don’t you agree?
According to the Dr. Sears Wellness Institute, “stress and tension elevate stress hormones, tighten muscles, constrict blood vessels, upset neurohormones, depress the immune system, and overload the heart.” On the other hand, “Laughter relieves tension, lowers stress hormones, improves neurochemistry, settles the heart, and boosts the immune system.” Have you ever experienced this feel-good reaction from laughing? My family tends to deal with stress with laughter, even stress brought about by serious illness, or relieving stress by laughing at shared memories at a funeral. We’re always respectful, but we have also learned that we need to be sensitive to others who may not appreciate our coping with stress with humor.
Viktor Frankl, a doctor and Holocaust survivor whose mother, father, and wife all died in concentration camps, espoused laughter as a key reason he survived the concentration camp: “I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.”
Clearly, laughter is no laughing matter (you may groan at my feeble joke). I love to laugh. I love to laugh at funny stories, funny situations—even at myself. I figure if I laugh at myself, no one else can ever laugh at me, they can only laugh with me. One of the things that attracted my husband and me to each other was our shared sense of humor. Unfortunately, it’s not everyone’s sense of humor. While we find each other hilarious, there are those who don’t. 🤷🏼♀️ I remember one of our kids coming home from grade school perplexed because no one laughed at her joke. I had to explain that not everyone had our same sense of humor. The word weird may even have been used. The saving grace for our daughters is that they have developed fine senses of humor that are more mainstream than Mom and Dad’s. Thank goodness!
Oh look, a photo op!
I love to act like a tourist and pose with fun and sometimes dorky things. I take delight in sticking my head through those pictures with openings for your face. I have fun with photo ops that were most likely set up for kids, not for me. The resulting pictures amuse me, and the act of doing it makes me laugh. I mean, is there anyone who has been to Knott’s Berry Farm who could pass up the opportunity to sit with the flirty saloon girls or scruffy miner figures just waiting to have their pictures taken with you? Or pose with the inimitable Walt and Mickey in the Happiest Place on Earth?
There comes a point where your kids are too cool to pose with random inanimate objects, and that makes it funnier for me to do it at my age, in my opinion. We have a Sinclair dinosaur at the gas station in town that I’m dying to take a picture with, but I just haven’t done it yet. I will get there, though!
It’s funny (see what I did there?), but I remember several laughter-filled times and situations growing up as if they were unique, as if I didn’t laugh very often. Nothing could be further from the truth, because I love to have laughter-filled days and miss it if I don’t have some good laughs for several days. But some humorous episodes are just burned into your memory.
Tickled Pink
When we were kids, my dad would tickle us if we kissed his bald head. We thought it was to keep us from kissing his shiny pate, but now I think he just loved to hear us laugh. And of course it was exciting and daring to risk that tickling. We would sneak up, plant one on his head, and try, always unsuccessfully, to get away quickly. Since Dad always stopped tickling as soon as we asked rather than leaving us breathless, it was a fun little tradition. I sometimes have a moment’s pause when I kiss my husband’s bald head, subconsciously half-expecting the tickle response. But I don’t actually enjoy being tickled quite as much as I did when I was a child. Go figure.
Now, my mom didn’t laugh in an unrestrained manner as easily as my dad, so we cherished the times she broke down and had a good belly laugh. One time my dad had been working out of town and my mom had found a book called 100 Ways to Cook Ground Beef (I kid you not). By the sixth day of variations on hamburger, when my mom asked me to offer thanks at lunch, what came out of my mouth was, “for this?” My mom got so tickled she couldn’t stop laughing. My sister and I caught her contagious laughter, and any stress we had flew out the window. When we finally got ourselves under control, my sister said the prayer and we ate that ground beef culinary delight. Yum.
I’m laughing with you, not at you
My aunt had a delighted and delightful laugh that you could recognize from a fair distance away. No one could repress it, and it almost compelled you to laugh along with her. She was known for her boisterous, infectious laughter. We once were on the tram tour at the San Diego Zoo, when the guide told us the most dangerous animal in the world was just down the hill. Oh, my aunt and I both bit hard. We craned our necks to see this most dangerous creature. When we realized we were looking at the drivers on the San Diego freeway, my aunt’s infectious laughter rang out through the trees and carried the whole tram along with her, as we cracked up at our gullibility.
The funniest movie I ever saw was with a friend who had one of those uninhibited laughs that drew amused looks from everyone in the theater except maybe that grump sitting in the row in front of us. The movie was “What’s Up, Doc?” with Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, and Madeline Kahn. My friend found nearly every scene hilarious and his laughter bounced off each seat in the theater and reverberated in the rafters. When I saw the movie again years later, it was humorous, but I realized that my friend’s irrepressible laughter was what had made it so irresistibly funny.
Don’t make me laugh!
When you’re in a situation where you shouldn’t laugh, or at least not out loud, it seems that’s the time you can’t stop laughing. As adults, my sister and I were sitting with my mom in worship services one Sunday. She had a great sense of humor, but it was pretty quiet and more likely to bring a chuckle than a guffaw. To set the stage, there was, at the time, a TV commercial for Tic Tac mints that used the tag line, “Wanna really shake up your mouth?” The actors shook their heads as if the tic tac was causing an earthquake in their mouths. Well, on this day, in the middle of worship, our very sedate, “don’t talk in church,” preacher’s-wife mom took a tic tac then offered them to my sister and me.
When we looked at Mom to thank her, she did the “shake up your mouth” action from the commercial, and we completely lost it. The whole pew was shaking with our barely-contained laughter, and tears were running down our cheeks trying to suppress the sound. It was so unexpected and so hilarious coming from our mom! We had the hardest time ever getting our laughter under control and keeping it quiet! Every time we looked at each other or at Mom, we would start again. Maybe this isn’t very funny in the telling, and if not, I guess you had to be there. But trust me, it was hysterical!
I’m not laughing, you’re laughing
I once gave a lesson on peace in which I brought up the idea of laughter relieving stress, and that it was infectious. To prove the point, I just started laughing. I let my laughter crescendo and seem to get out of my control. Soon the whole audience was laughing with me, having no idea if there was a joke they’d missed or what they were laughing at. In fact, my fake laughter quickly became real laughter! It was just contagious and made our hearts merry!
Hilarity is good for you. Centuries—makes that millennia—before Voltaire, Solomon said, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” (Proverbs 17:22) I’m really not excited about my bones drying up, so I try to err on the side of cheerfulness.
And while we’re talking about being cheerful, never underestimate the power of shared laughter. My favorite people are those that I can let loose and laugh with! Everybody’s spirits are lifted, and sometimes when I’ve been laughing with one of my peeps, I realize how much I needed it! Laughter is a kind of cleansing, an emotional boost to keep you going. It also helps make connection with strangers. I like to see people laughing when I’m doing my dorky touristy posing.
When you are in a park where children are playing and laughing, look around and you’ll see they have brought laughter to those around them (skip over the ones who have just been told it’s time to go home; they may not be laughing).
John Cleese, an actor who loves to make people laugh, nailed it when he said, “Laughter connects you to people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.”
Disclaimer: continue to maintain social distancing while laughing! 😂 Laughing out loud is even more important when you’re masked up, though, because if it’s not audible, it might be like the tree that falls in the forest. If no one hears you laughing, have you really laughed? And don’t give me that old “I’m laughing inside” excuse! 😄 You can’t really LOL if you’re not LOL-ing.
Number 51 is the funniest one
At Bible camp when I was 10, there was a campfire story about a guy who was always telling jokes. Eventually all his friends had heard all his jokes. So he assigned a number to each joke, and when he wanted to tell one of his jokes he would just say, “17” or “48” or any other number, and everyone would laugh because they knew the joke that belonged to that number. The campers loved the story. Every few minutes it seemed that someone called out a random number and everyone would laugh. Talk about an inside joke! But it proves you can laugh at anything!
We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we are happy because we laugh.
– William James
So go on, laugh! Watch funny movies or YouTube videos. Laugh at other people’s jokes, even if you don’t think they’re that funny. You’ll both feel good! Play with kids or kittens or puppies. Pose for fun and funny pictures!
Don’t act your age. Laugh at yourself. Ride a carousel. Do a silly dance. Sing at the top of your lungs using a hairbrush for a microphone. (I don’t know anyone who would do that, LOL 🤣) The times when you don’t feel like laughing are probably the times you need it the most. So just in case this is one of those times, I’ll get you started with a funny joke. You know the one:
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