Why We Must Laugh

It's no joke.

Bonobos laughing during play at Lola ya Bonobo, a sanctuary in the Congo. Photo by Zanna Clay.

A couple years ago, I did a series of three guided MDMA therapy sessions. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I thought the sessions would help me face things I have a hard time facing. We all have those things. MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy, has a way of making you feel happy — or at least, making whatever is going on seem okay. Being in that emotional state with a therapist allows you to deal with difficult stuff without getting too freaked out.

My first session surprised me. Instead of feeling happy, I was overcome with grief. I realized I’d been holding in a lot of grief, both for my aging parents and for our sweet old world and its sorry state. It’s no major revelation that we need to feel grief when it arises, but in my busyness, I’d forgotten that. I still forget it regularly. But now, I have the experiential wisdom from that MDMA session to remind me to stop now and then and feel what I’m feeling.

The next time, a different theme emerged: compassion. In the throes of horror about the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, I was struggling to feel compassion for certain people — you know, Nazis, MAGAs. Yet my inner self was telling me to center compassion — at least, to try.

The third session evoked yet another theme: humor. After going through the feelings of the first two sessions, my wise inner self apparently thought it was a good idea to remind me of the importance, the centrality, of humor. What a relief.

Now that I’ve had a distinct theme emerge at each MDMA session, I expect that to happen — so I’m quite certain that if I ever do another one, I won’t get such a clear message.

But I’m grateful to have gotten those three. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the third message from my inner self. I may have needed it on that particular day, after the more intense first two sessions. Most of the time, though, I tend to default naturally to humor. At the moment, it feels more necessary than ever.

The trickster and court jester

It’s no secret that in dark times, we need comic relief. Humor has always helped people cope with hardship. That was true even during the Holocaust: some people who were imprisoned in concentration camps credit humor with saving their lives. Indigenous people have long used humor as a survival mechanism.

Humor can serve a function similar to MDMA therapy: it can make the hard stuff more palatable. This goes beyond our individual experiences with humor, as powerful as those are. Humor can also make stuff more palatable in the larger political sphere.

In medieval times, court jesters often took on this role. Sure, they spent a lot of time simply entertaining the court, and in battles they mocked the enemy while lifting the spirits of their own side. But they also had the special privilege of revealing the truth without being punished, because they did it with humor.

Now, with medieval times long behind us (or are they?), that role still has a place in our society. For a while, one of its most prominent players was Jon Stewart.

I remember what a breath of fresh air The Daily Show was during the Bush years — ah, how quaint those times seem now. Stewart took on the role of the court jester or trickster, the one who could voice the truths others weren’t facing. After Walter Cronkite died, Stewart oddly became the nation’s most trusted newscaster, all while insisting he was only a comedian. Did he say that to absolve himself of responsibility for any claims he might make? Maybe. But that’s what court jesters do, isn’t it?

After all, the trickster character — an archetype Jung identified as appearing throughout history and across cultures — is known for being both witty and deceitful. But we forgive him (is it always a him?), because he makes us laugh. And we always want to laugh.

The primacy of laughter

Laughing is one of the first things we do, before talking, within the first four months of life. Who knew? Maybe someone who’s had kids, but I haven’t.

Even as a childless cat lady, though, I love a baby’s laugh as much as anyone — and it seems that everyone does. Just search YouTube for videos of laughing babies, and you’ll find gems like this:

Feel better now? You’re welcome!

Having arisen earlier than speech evolutionarily, as well as in each of our individual lives, laughter is thought to be a way to communicate and connect socially, serving as a “social cue and social glue.” Other apes laugh, too. As do other social animals. Rats laugh; seals laugh; elephants laugh. Laughter often happens during play, with purposes like signaling that a fight isn’t serious.

In humans, laughter synchronizes the emotions of people in a group, signals cooperation, and reduces stress. I’d say we need all those things now.

Laughter and joy

I’m not the only one writing about finding joy in our post-election world, as I did a couple weeks ago. Also on Substack,

Carlos Greaves

wrote a lovely personal account of finding and holding onto joy. John Stoehr of the newsletter The Editorial Board wrote that “every act of joy is an act of defiance.” Why is that? Because the people who’ve won power want us to feel defeated and destroyed. We can’t let them succeed.

Laughter is a way to express joy and to keep ourselves going. Laughing at the fascists didn’t win us the election, though it certainly made them uncomfortable. But it made us feel better during the election season, and it can help us feel better now. And in feeling better, we defeat their goal of conquering our spirit. We diminish their power over us.

Laughter isn’t the answer to everything, and the joy it brings us isn’t the only feeling we need to let into our lives; apparently, we must also feel grief and compassion, to name just a couple. We can’t laugh our way out of our troubles. (Serenity now — insanity later! Extra credit if you get that reference.) But without laughter, we are doomed.

I’m grateful to my inner self for reminding me of that. You probably don’t need reminding. But if you do — well, you’re welcome.