Healing with Laughter

“We don’t laugh because we’re happy — we’re happy because we laugh.”
—William James

Laughter is a healing force. It’s not wrong to laugh in the face of grief or tragedy. It is always helpful and healthy to find something to laugh about, even if we laugh through our tears.

If we are in a rough spot in life we can find something that makes us laugh if we look long and hard enough. Some of us might have just the thing handy. Maybe a favorite movie that we have watched over and over that brings laughter. There may be people in our lives who are good for a laugh.

Most of us know of something that brings humor in our lives. So when we feel down, or even when we are just stressed and overworked, it’s time to pull out that thing that makes us laugh so hard it brings tears.

If we don’t know what makes us laugh we need to find out. Sometimes laughter can come in unexpected times when we are distraught. It may seem inappropriate to laugh. We may have preconceived notions that if a particular thing happens in our life we aren’t supposed to laugh about anything. This is just not true. As long as we don’t laugh at someone in a hurtful way, laughter is something we need and should seek.

Once after one of my cats died I told a friend about it. He said, “I don’t care, I hate cats.” And he didn’t until he saw how sad I was and then he offered comfort. After this same friend passed away I shared with others this exchange about the dead cat and we all got a good laugh out of it, and this was in the midst of early grieving our loss of him.

So while what he said to me was certainly not funny when he said it, in his passing it is now a source of laughter for me. We just never know where we will get it, but we need to find laughter.

To laugh is healing and necessary for happiness in a world that is often filled with pain.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

“You have to laugh at yourself, because you’d cry your eyes out if you didn’t.”
—Emily Saliers

We take ourselves and life way too serious sometimes. We worry about tomorrow and yesterday and forget all about what we are doing at the moment.

Have you every done anything really silly? Maybe something that you cannot believe you would do by letting yourself be out of perfect control for one minute? Did you live through it? Did the world come to an end? Of course not.

And the best part is that when we do make mistakes or do something outside our ordinary boxed in perfect little lives and we can laugh about it, the world is a happier place because we’ve let go, even if momentarily, of perfectionism.

Someone said, and it’s been repeated often, that laughter is the best medicine. A good ol’ deep belly laugh can be one of the most healing moments we can have. We don’t have them enough, but if we think back to the last one we had we can see where it helped. Most likely we had tears streaming down our face and could not control the laugh or the tears.

It’s not always easy to get to that place. In the movie “Steel Magnolias” there’s a part where two usually crabby older women have just attended the funeral of a young, vibrant new wife and mother. They argue a bit and before you know it they are laughing. I did the same thing watching the movie; cried and then laughed.

Both crying and laughing can bring healing tears.

Find something to laugh about every day.