The healing power of laughter

Humour is more than entertainment. Laughter can create distance. From our worries, from our ego, from our fears – and sometimes even from our own seriousness.

We live in a time in which almost everything is judged, commented on, optimised and turned into a problem. News, social media, work, self-improvement, social conflicts – there is always something we are supposed to think about. Our mind often runs like a hamster wheel.

And sometimes no grand solution is needed. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of laughter. Not because everything is fine. But because for a moment we realise that we don't have to take it all quite so desperately seriously.

Laughter creates distance

Humour changes our perspective. A situation that held us completely captive a moment ago can suddenly look different once we step back and notice its absurdity.

That doesn't mean playing problems down. It means not automatically handing them all the power over our thinking. One ability matters especially here: not taking everything personally.

Someone gives us a strange look. An email sounds unfriendly. Something doesn't work. Someone criticises us. Something turns out differently than planned. Our mind immediately starts making stories out of it: What did I do wrong? What do they think of me? Why does this always happen to me? And the carousel of thoughts starts spinning.

Humour can open a small door here. Maybe the email was simply an email. Maybe the other person was having a bad day. Maybe something simply went wrong. And maybe life is sometimes just wonderfully absurd.

Being able to laugh about it is not weakness. It can be a form of inner freedom.

The highest form of humour: laughing at yourself

Laughing at others is easy. Laughing at yourself is harder. And that is exactly where humour becomes interesting. Anyone who can laugh at their own contradictions no longer has to defend themselves against reality.

We want to be calm – and get worked up over a trifle. We want to be mindful – and still spend five minutes looking for the glasses sitting on our head. We want to grow spiritually – and feel annoyed when someone takes our parking space. We want to overcome the ego – and are rather proud of how good we supposedly are at it.

Life is full of such contradictions. Perhaps awareness does not mean resolving them completely. Perhaps it sometimes means noticing them – and laughing about them. Not cynically. Not in a self-destructive way. But with a certain loving distance from ourselves.

Humour is not contempt

There is one decisive difference. Humour can connect. But it can also hurt. Laughing at someone, humiliating them or placing yourself above others has little to do with liberating humour.

The decisive point is the direction: are we laughing with each other – or at someone else's expense?

When we can laugh at ourselves, something different happens. We no longer have to prove that we are better, smarter, more successful or more spiritual. We are allowed to simply be human. Imperfect. Contradictory. Sometimes wonderful. Sometimes quite off. And there is something freeing in exactly that.

We are not separate

Perhaps that is one of the deepest messages of humour: we are all in the same boat.

We all have fears. We all make mistakes. We all want to be loved. We all try to cope with this strange adventure called life. One person does it with a business plan. Another with meditation. The next with yoga. Someone else with a bottle of beer and a Franconian "Bassd scho."

And in the end we all face the same big questions. Humour can dissolve these artificial hierarchies for a moment.

When the emperor has no clothes

That is why humour also has a social function. Satire and political cabaret can make power visible by making it ridiculous. That is something other than political persuasion. Satire can enable a change of perspective: people with power are people too.

They make mistakes. They misspeak. They have vanities. They contradict themselves. They can be just as absurd as all of us. Humour symbolically pulls them off the pedestal and back down to the human level.

That can be uncomfortable. And precisely for that reason humour has been an important antidote to excessive authority in many societies. Historically the court jester had an interesting role: he was allowed to say things others could not say.

Not every piece of satire is automatically clever or fair. Humour can manipulate and hurt. But good humour can create something that pure outrage often cannot: it can create distance without making us stop thinking.

Humour in Buddhist traditions

Buddhist traditions also carry this ability to recognise the absurdity of the human mind. The Zen path is full of paradoxical stories, questions and situations that let our habitual thought structures run into emptiness.

The famous koan does not necessarily work because we find the "right answer". It brings our rational mind to a point where it notices: maybe I don't have to understand everything. And sometimes that is exactly what sets us free.

Humour often arises from the same moment. We desperately try to control life intellectually – and eventually notice that life takes remarkably little interest in that. You can despair about it. Or laugh.

Laughter belongs in shamanic thinking too

Nature-based and shamanic paths are sometimes portrayed in the West as unnecessarily heavy and solemn. Rituals, drums, sweat lodge, medicine plants, visions, prayers – all of that can be profound. But nature itself is not solemn. It is beautiful, brutal, absurd and funny all at once.

• A tree grows crooked.
• A bird sits on a sign that reads "Do not feed".
• A squirrel steals something and runs off as though it had just robbed a bank.
• A person sits meditating in the forest for hours – and a mosquito reminds them that they still have a body.

That is nature too. Perhaps connection with nature therefore includes not only reverence. But also the ability to laugh at our own importance.

The forest has no calendar

In the forest we meet things that don't fit our schedule. A woodpecker hammers somewhere. A deer suddenly stands by the path. A beetle walks across our shoe. The wind cracks a branch exactly when we are thinking about something entirely different. A ray of sun falls through the leaves. We see a particularly odd tree. Or we trip over a root and notice once again: nature is not here so that we look perfect.

The forest brings us out of our head and into the moment. And sometimes that moment offers a smile.

A smile can be a small gift

We often underestimate how much a brief human contact can change. A smile. A friendly glance. A small joke. A shared laugh with a complete stranger.

Maybe it doesn't change their life. But maybe it changes the next three minutes. And sometimes three minutes are enough.

Someone is right in the middle of their own carousel of thoughts. Appointments. Bills. Relationships. Work. Worries. Self-doubt. Then they meet someone who simply smiles. No coaching. No life wisdom. No optimisation strategy. Just a human moment.

And for a moment the hamster wheel stops.

Humour multiplies when we share it

The beautiful thing about laughter is that it needs no big budget. No app. No seminar. No perfect life situation. Humour can arise wherever people are together.

And just like love and compassion, a smile gains strength by being passed on. One smile creates another. A shared laugh connects two people. A humorous remark can ease a tense situation. Not always. But sometimes. And sometimes "sometimes" is enough.

Franconians don't go to the cellar to laugh

Of course you could claim that a typical Franconian goes down to the cellar to laugh. That would be far too easy. Why go anywhere at all?

We can laugh in the forest. By the river. On a hill. In the garden. On a bench. On a walk. By a campfire. With friends. With strangers. In the middle of everyday life. And even in the middle of a difficult situation – if the moment allows it.

Humour needs no special place. Perhaps it mainly needs one thing: the willingness to stop controlling life all the time.

The Black Knight – “Just a flesh wound”

A wonderful example of how humour can help us recognise life’s absurdity can be found in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975). King Arthur meets the Black Knight, who stubbornly blocks his path. They duel – and although Arthur cuts off both his arms and finally both his legs, the knight remains utterly convinced of his own invincibility.

“’Tis but a scratch.”

What at first looks like an absurd fight is almost a small parable about the human ego: reality has long since provided unmistakable information – but our inner knight refuses to acknowledge it.

We all know this.

We cling to an idea even though it no longer works. We insist on being right. We turn a small thing into a personal catastrophe. And even when life has already cut off our metaphorical arm, we still stand there and shout:

“It’s just a flesh wound!”

That is precisely where the scene’s brilliance lies. We laugh at the Black Knight – and perhaps recognise a small part of ourselves at the same time.

Humour creates distance from our own drama. It does not say: “Your pain is unimportant.” Rather, it says: “Perhaps you are not your drama.”

And sometimes this shift in perspective is exactly the moment when we become flexible again.

The Black Knight loses his limbs – but not his conviction. Perhaps we may sometimes do exactly the opposite: let go of our convictions before we cling to them at our own expense.

Not everything is funny. But there is something to discover everywhere.

Humour does not mean ignoring suffering. There are situations in which laughter would be inappropriate. Grief needs space. Pain needs space. Anger sometimes needs space. Seriousness is part of life too.

But seriousness is not the same as grimness. We can take something seriously without losing ourselves in it. We can take responsibility without considering ourselves the centre of the universe. We can suffer and still laugh again at some point. We can be aware and silly at the same time. We can be profound and talk nonsense.

Perhaps exactly this ability is a sign of inner flexibility.

Back home

Nature can remind us of that. A tree does not try to be someone else. A river does not debate whether it flows fast enough. A bird does not ask whether its song meets other people's expectations. And a forest does not worry about whether it was productive enough today.

We humans have made a rather complicated affair out of it. Perhaps we may sometimes simply pause. Breathe. Look. Marvel. And laugh. At the world. At its absurdities. At our own contradictions. But never at the expense of the people around us.

Because in the end we are all in this big, strange adventure together.

Out of the carousel of thoughts. Into life. And if it fits: laugh together. Back home – to ourselves and to nature.