Eight Pillars of Joy: Humor
Laughter helps us relax
Humor can help deflate tense situations.
Laugh at yourself so no one else can ever make a fool of you! (1)
Humor comes from the root word humus, the same as humility and humanity. Thus, it asks us to find our humanity and humility in shared laughter. When we can laugh at ourselves, we take ourselves less seriously, and we encourage others to laugh with us. This can bring folks together on a common ground, where common flaws can be let go and forgotten or seen and examined in a lighter atmosphere.
Take, for example, a situation where Archbishop Desmond Tutu needed to diffuse a tense situation involving discrimination on a large scale. He began telling a story about how the large-nosed people didn’t like the small-nosed people and were excluding them at every opportunity. He soon had his audience of opposing political forces laughing at themselves and seeing how their thinking was rather silly.
Wholehearted laughter also has the ability to relax your muscles and can be good for your heart and health in general. There’s no reason not to laugh!
I don’t think I woke up and presto I was funny. I think it is something that you can cultivate. Like anything else, it is a skill. Yes, it does help if you have the inclination, and especially if you can laugh at yourself, so learn to laugh at yourself. It’s really the easiest place to begin. It’s about humility. Laugh at yourself and don’t be so pompous and serious. If you start looking for the humor in life, you will find it. You will stop asking, Why me? And start recognizing that life happens to all of us. It makes everything easier, including your ability to accept others and accept all that life will bring. - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Exercises
- When you’re feeling down, whisper these two words: “Beep, Boop” to yourself. Go on, try it right now. Then repeat as often as necessary until you start laughing. See how your mood lifts?
- Sometimes over time, as we become less sensitive about an incident, we can find humor there. Think of something that happened to you in the past that upset you. Is there any humor in that incident that makes it easier to remember?
- It’s not easy to laugh at yourself and you’ll want to do some desensitizing first. Here’s how: Come up with a list of things you don’t like about yourself from least sensitive to most. Read it out loud to someone else in order to make the next step easier. Working with the items you feel less sensitive to first, create a few jokes about yourself and slowly work your way up to those things you’re most sensitive about.