Thoughts On (the necessity of) Having a Sense of Humor

Previously, I wrote about feeling in a funk, but I think the fog of funk is lifting for me, even though between then and now I caught Covid. I wasn’t terribly sick, but I had to go to bed for long hours and sleep. And after a couple of days I noticed I was sleeping more peacefully. No longer was I curled up in a fetal position, hugging myself tightly.? Covid had made me relax?? Is this a joke?

I started having random thoughts about humor. The recent death of Meat Loaf triggered it!? That in itself is comic. I posted on Facebook:? “Meat Loaf is dead!”? After a couple of friends ?laughed, thinking I was referring to my own cooking, I realized how it sounded.? The more I thought about Meat Loaf, I started smiling.? Meat Loaf (the singer) had always cracked me up when I saw pictures of him, or watched videos!? At three hundred pounds, and with a huge voice, he was large in every sense and he flaunted it proudly. Here was this “ugly” lover on stage, sweating, long dark slightly greasy hair, dressed in a frilly white shirt and black jacket that said “MEAT,” singing songs of desire and young love in overwrought emotional performances that could bring tears to your eyes. The comic aspect at odds with the heartbreaking sincerity of the words and emotion.? So, I was sad when I read he died (gone was the most amazing, never-to-be-heard again voice; and gone was a time from my younger days), and yet the announcement “Meat Loaf has died” just sounded funny.? The comic aspect deepened and darkened as we learned he died of Covid after being a vocal anti-vaxxer.? The perfect example of the dark humor of irony.

I continued thinking how humor is a necessary leavening for the heaviness of life, a bit of light in times of darkness.??

I started teaching again on Zoom for the first two weeks of this spring semester. ?I am teaching serious stuff—nothing comic.? John Milton, the Enlightenment, with Spinoza and Newton, and Locke.? But when I looked briefly at my Zoom recordings of the classes, I was struck by how often I laughed, or said something funny (amusing myself, if not my students). and I realized not only that teaching/conversing with my students makes me happy, but also I sometimes can’t help but say something unserious because humor feels necessary, seriously necessary.

But these days it is easy to say something ironically or with a sense of fun that someone is likely to mistake, or call out as inappropriate or even worse, offensive.? Be careful what you joke about. We have to check ourselves, constantly, to make sure we don’t say the “wrong” thing.? It is true that words and the things we say can be used to inflict hurt, be hateful, racist, or to demean others of their humanity.? But just as we are continually monitoring and testing ourselves for Covid, so too I feel we are becoming hyper-vigilant about our language, words, and even sentences.? It is necessary and at times just, but isn’t it also exhausting?? I know some of my readers will even be afraid to “like” what I write, to be public about that (it happened once before with a blog), and I think that‘s a scary state of affairs.??

Humor is transgressive, a point I will return to, and thus dangerous in our increasingly polarized and violent America. We need change and reform to transform our society, to make it more just.? Zeal and passion fuel the urge to effect change, but it also fuels the conservative fear of change, desperate efforts to return to a supposedly better past. I wonder if zeal is inevitably at odds with humor.

Freud taught that humor often conceals anger and aggression, which is nevertheless still there, simmering below the surface. Jerry Seinfeld has said “all humor starts with anger,” which I think is an exaggeration, for there are varieties of humor.?

The comedian Bob Saget, who unexpectedly died in his sleep in a hotel room on January 9, 2022, was beloved by many, and brought lightness and humor to our lives. He was tender and kind, even though he had a filthy mouth. As with everything, there’s a spectrum, from light to dark humor, from empathetically kind and gentle to hostile, nasty and intentionally hurtful. There’s “gallows humor,” purposely grim during desperate situations, historically used by people condemned to die.? Humor can be something to protect you,?a weapon to wound, or a healing balm. It can be something to raise the spirit.?Laughter can indeed be good medicine, and something to bring people together, rather than divide, though I suppose we always risk alienating someone. And in our time of pandemic instability and grim seriousness, we need that medicine.

Humor is a way to cope with the sadnesses and tragedies of life. Think how many famous?comic writers and comedians actually have struggled with depression: Sarah Silverman, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor.? Robin Williams took his own life after being diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia. Lenny Bruce, John Belushi, Chris Farley all died young of drug overdoses.? Most depressed comedians, however, survive, and it’s their humor that is a life-giving drug, a self-generated medicine that helps them survive and thrive, while helping and giving pleasure to others. Wit and humor by the talented Mel Brooks, for example, is like a gift, which can be a service and a kindness to others.?

But humor is trasngressive, subversive, and?thus feared and hated by ideologues. In Nazi Germany, Goebels called political jokes “the remnant of liberalism.” Anti-Nazi humor was considered a crime against Hitler, the state, and the Nazi government, punishable by death! As the linguist John McWhorter tweeted on January 28, 2022, “Humor is the first thing to go under the rule of ideologues.” So, I worry about our situation now.

We need humor, perhaps more than ever.?Bessel Van der Kolk’s 2016 book on trauma, The Body Keeps the Score, continues to be in the top ten on the NY Times bestsellers list. Anxiety and depression are at record levels among our young people, resulting in an increase in suicide, especially young men.?With this in mind, I do everything I can to keep my students happy, to give them a sense of purpose and hope. The New York Times ran an article on Feb. 18, with the headline “Yale Professor of Happiness [who teaches the popular course “Psychology and the Good Life] Says Anxiety is Destroying her Students.” In the interview, she announced she’s taking leave due to burnout. (Dark comedy here? The course on happiness isn’t working? And has exhausted her?)

My wise psychiatrist friend, who has specialized in childhood trauma, tells me of all the adaptive, coping mechanisms for trauma, humor, especially witty humor (not bathroom humor), is the highest form. I’ve been thinking about that. The brain must somehow transform, transmute the trauma—and yes, there may be anger and aggression, but somehow the material becomes changed and the person assumes a power over it, at least momentarily,?through the transformative power of language.?It is creative, maybe not unlike the opening of Genesis where God creates the world through language.?“Let there be light.”

Dedicated to the memory of my husband, Tony, the wittiest person I have ever known.

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