Can Laughter Heal?

Listen: “A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash

I grew up in a family in which teasing and laughing were our sixth love language (a reference to Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages). My dad enjoys teasing the people he loves, and he believes if you can’t laugh at yourself—well you’re just taking yourself too damn seriously!

I remember learning this lesson from my dad at a very young age. When I was about seven or eight years old, my dad started taking me on fishing trips to Grand Lake, Oklahoma. We fished for white bass during spawning season in the spring on Lake Hudson, which is below the Grand Lake Dam. My dad would meet his fishing buddies at the lake, and he would drag me along. His friends loved to tease me. They would tease me about losing a fish, losing a lure, tangling up their line, scaring the fish away, peeing out the boat, taking a nap, breaking a reel, letting the big one go, failing to plant the hook, setting the hook too hard, cussing when I lost a fish, driving the boat poorly, eating too much, or—you get the picture. You name it; they teased me about it. And I had to put up with their snoring at night!!

I recall one of the early trips I went on with the guys, and I got teased particularly hard about something. The guys were having a big laugh at my expense. My dad could tell I got bent out of shape and my feelings were hurt. He didn’t tell the guys to stop teasing me. He pulled me aside and taught me a lesson that stuck with me. He said, “Son, you need to stop taking yourself so seriously. All of the guys tease each other. We are just having fun. You just need to tease them back. We all laugh at each other.”

Well, needless to say, I learned the art of teasing. It has played well in the world of athletic competition, some construction work I did years ago, my own family, my friends, and adventure sports. I did have to learn its limits in some settings. Not everyone learned this lesson from their dad. I’ve had to apologize on a few occasions.

I also learned the art of laughing at myself. This is vitally important in life and in leadership. In fact, humor is an important ingredient of EQ. (See Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.) I think I learned the art form of self-deprecating humor from my British friends. Some of the best messages I have ever heard fall into this category. Check out Adrian Plass as an example (The Sacred Diary of Adrain Plass).

Susan Sparks wrote a book that was featured in “O, The Oprah Magazine” entitled Laugh Your Way to Grace: Reclaiming the Spiritual Power of Humor. At the heart of the book is this statement: “If you can laugh at yourself, you can forgive yourself. If you can forgive yourself, your can forgive others.” This reminds me of a famous Proverb which speaks about the healing power of laughter—“A cheerful heart is good medicine” (Proverbs 17:22).

I must confess, 2019 was so dark for me that I almost lost my way, lost myself, lost my sense of self-deprecating humor. Everything just hurt too badly. As I started to heal, I started to laugh again. In some of my darkest moments, I found myself surrounded by people who loved me and helped me laugh again. There’s usually some humor in our brokenness, if we can step back from it for a moment. And people will laugh with us because they are laughing at themselves as well. The best of people, the most gracious kind, see grace in brokenness. I was reading some AA literature a while ago and ran across a short reflection on laughter (Alcoholics Anonymous: Daily Reflection, “The Gift of Laughter,” February 20). “When my AA sponsor began to laugh and point out my self-pity and ego-feeding deceptions, I was annoyed and hurt, but it taught me to lighten up and focus on my recovery. I soon learned to laugh at myself and eventually I taught those I sponsor to laugh also. Every day I ask God to help me stop taking myself too seriously.”

While I was studying religion at Baylor University, it finally dawned on me that the Hebrew Prophets and Jesus used story telling and humor in their teaching styles. This never occurred to me when I was growing up in church. Granted, they used ancient forms of humor that sometimes escape our detection like hyperbole and graphic slang (in Hebrew and Greek, but Bible translators don’t do it justice). Consider the humor in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of the speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:4; NLT). This is some funny crap, and Jesus was trying to get us to smell our own! (Check out The Humor of Christ by Elton Trueblood. 

One of my favorite British authors was G. K. Chesterton. In his book Othodoxy, he makes some profound insights which illustrate the point of this blog. “Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. Satan fell by the force of gravity.” Pride weights us down; humility lifts us up.

Let’s fly together. (For some good laughs, check out my weekly stories with my dad every Sunday on my social media platforms and my website: realfredherron.com.)

Shalom

©realfredherron, 2021