The most memorable TED talk I ever listened to was given by a woman who spent her life researching laughter. I’m trying to imagine what her obituary will say: Doris researched laughter and always had something to say at cocktail parties. Or her gravestone, for that matter. She lived, loved and LAUGHED.
Anyway, the laughter researcher, whose first name is something in the genre of Doris, makes a startling claim: most human laughter is not spontaneous or gut-level. Rather, it is intentional and affected, an often unobserved but highly sophisticated mechanism that we draw on for a broad range of social interactions.
In her talk, Doris (or a Doris-adjacent name) plays clips of laughter she has recorded throughout her career. And she’s right–it is surprisingly easy to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary laughter. She’s also right that a majority of the clips contain voluntary, polite laughter. Weirdest of all, since watching the talk, I have noticed her theory being confirmed in myself; most of the time when I laugh it’s an attempt to validate what the other person says, or a lazy way to acknowledge their comment.
While I believe in social etiquette, I am far more interested in genuine or involuntary laughter, especially as a Christian. Yes, you read that correctly, especially as a Christian. Once some of us asked our pastor what resources he uses in navigating difficult relationships. I was a little disbelieving of his answer: keep a sense of humour. At first, I thought he was joking. It turns out he wasn’t joking at all, although one might say he was advocating for joking. The more I think about his answer, the more I see the wisdom in it. Consider the worst enemies of harmonious relationships: fear, building walls, pride, anger. None of these can be present when people are laughing together in an involuntary way. Try it for yourself sometime. Try laughing with someone while being afraid of them or feeling superior to them. Have fun squaring that circle.
Of course, like anything that’s involuntary, we cannot force this kind of laughter. Like any spiritual grace, it is something the Spirit gives to us, not something we conjure up. We can, however, value it, nurture it and celebrate it. One of our problems as Christians is our tendency to equate spiritual with sanctimonious. But as Peter Kreeft has pointed out, we are talking here about a God who created a world in which cat farts happen. Never forget that! I also think often of something the Quaker writer Richard Foster likes to say: spiritual progress happens best through the Principle of Indirection. In other words, if we tackle our problems head-on, we often fail. The Spirit invites us to come at our problems from a different angle, to probe and be curious, to laugh at ourselves and the many messes we find ourselves in.
In many ways, laughter is the antithesis of fear. I see a thread in my life where laughter gave perspective amidst the relational difficulties experienced by me and the people I know. In one situation I know, someone is joining a Latin-mass Catholic church – making the vows, getting catechised, attending mass every day – and he is worried about how his conservative Christian parents are going to respond. There is humour in that if one finds the grace to receive it and laugh. In another case a father-in-law told his son-in-law he is revoking his blessing of the marriage to his daughter because the otherwise faithful and adoring son-in-law holds the wrong position on some doctrinal matter. I don’t wish to be flippant, but this also is nothing short of absurd and hilarious if one can see it.
May the Spirit give us clarity and grace to recognise the times in our lives when laughter is an appropriate, perhaps even the only appropriate, response the curveballs life throws us.