Does it Take Courage to Laugh?
Recently I looked up some research on the science of laughter. Over and over again, in several somewhat respected journals, I read about this interesting statistic: Babies, on average, laugh 400 times a day, while adults laugh only 15 times daily. I seriously searched, but couldn’t find the origin of this “scientific study.”
So, I started thinking about it. There are 1440 minutes in a 24-hour day, and if a baby laughs 400 times in a 24-hour day, he’d have to laugh every 3.6 minutes. So, when is this baby is going to sleep if he’s doing all that laughing? It’s no wonder the adults around him are cranky and not smiling --- they’re too darn tired because their kid never sleeps!
But there’s lots of truth to the old saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” I found that out first-hand.
My husband died in 2018. That’s also the year my sisters and I began to notice that our parents were quietly struggling to live independently. In 2021, we helped them move to assisted living apartment, and eventually to memory care. In the span of three years, they moved to six different assisted living communities. In the summer of 2024, both of them died, within five weeks of each other.
So, it’s fair to say that the past six years have been the toughest of my life. There have been many moments filled with heartache, grief, and just plain hard work.
And the only way I could get through it all was with laughter.
In my search for ways to manage grief, I came across the works of Allen Klein, who is also known as “Mr. Jollytologist.” Klein has written several books that are helpful to anyone who seeks to manage adversity with humor and positivity.
Even though some of his books were published several years ago and may seem ancient by today’s standards, I highly recommend any of his writings about using humor to manage grief:
The Healing Power of Humor (1989)
The Courage to Laugh: Humor, Hope, and Healing in the Face of Death and Dying (1998)
You Can’t Ruin my Day (2015)
Embracing Life After Loss (2019)
Klein’s overarching theme in all of his work is using humor to get through tough times --- in particular, the death of someone you love. In his classic, The Healing Power of Humor, Klein says, “Humor lends a fresh eye … When we can find some humor in our upsets, they no longer seem as large or as important as they once did. Humor expands our limited picture frame and gets us to see more than just our problem” (p. 11).
So, in those dark times after Tim died, when I entered an empty house alone, and faced another evening of having no one to talk to, I turned to humor. I created a library of funny books and videos, and purposely created time to laugh. In the last half-hour or so before I went to bed, I read books by Betty White or Dave Barry, watched stand-up comedians such as Jim Gaffigan or Nate Bargatsky, and watched old episodes of “The Golden Girls” or “Cheers.”
At first, carving out this time for funny stuff felt strange. I’ve always been one to take the laptop to bed with me to get papers graded or paperwork done for my department at the university. And when Tim died, I had even more paperwork to take care of --- bills, emails, and forms to complete. So, taking time to do nothing but laugh felt odd, and I even felt a little bit guilty, as if I wasn’t supposed to be laughing at a time like this.
But eventually, I began to notice a pattern. I noticed that I didn’t dread the empty house as much as I had before. And I fell asleep a lot more easily. Laughter just seemed to calm me down.
I found out that humor does, indeed, lighten the load.
Read Allen Klein’s books to find out more about how humor can lighten your load.
References
Klein, A. (1989). The healing power of humor: Techniques for getting through loss, setback, upsets, disappointments, difficulties, trials, tribulations, and all that not-so-funny. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
