Milena Moser on humor in difficult times: What to laugh at?

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“I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much,” Teresa says the next day. She giggled to herself in bed before falling asleep and now almost feels like the muscles in her cheeks are hurting. As if her face wasn’t used to the corners of her mouth turning up. “This can’t be true,” she says. “Have I forgotten how to laugh?”

You can’t blame her, she’s had some tough years. And to be honest, I don’t know what was so funny that evening. There were four of us, we talked about this and that, about all the stupid things we’ve done in our lives, about awkward moments. We laughed a lot, it’s true. But the next morning my facial muscles don’t hurt. Since I started living with Victor, I laugh every day.

At first it was as strange to me as it is to my girlfriend today, just as unfamiliar. And, like her, I was painfully aware of how long I had not laughed. Probably because my children were younger. Children don’t just make you laugh, their own uncontrollable giggles, giggles and loud laughs are contagious and irresistible. Like “Fou rire”, which stunned us in embarrassing moments when we were teenagers. But what if you live alone? What if, as my friend describes it, you’re so tired from work and the (long American) commute that you no longer have the energy to see friends, babysit the dogs or kids, or even go to the local comedy club?

Laughter requires more than just all types of muscles. Humor itself is like a muscle. It needs to be activated and trained daily. The more I laugh, the more often I find a reason for it. From Victor I learned that this is possible even or especially in difficult times. Not just possible: necessary. I saw him draw cats on the board in the oncologist’s waiting room before his first consultation, cats with stethoscopes and surgical masks, cats with scalpels. And as the doctor stopped upon entering, the corners of his mouth involuntarily rose before he again assumed an expression appropriate to the occasion.

“You understand?” – Victor is often asked at such moments. When he doesn’t react to bad news with the expected drama. This is what he is accused of from time to time: that he is too cheerful. That he jokes too much. The situation is ultimately serious, personal and political. So does my friend, to whom I send several stupid movies of cats falling out of kitchen cabinets or jumping into the air in front of cucumbers to strengthen their neglected laughing muscles. “How can I laugh at something like this when children are dying?”

To quote another Victor, Viktor E. Frankl, who in his heartbreaking and heartwarming book… Say Yes to Life Anyway: “Humor is the weapon of the soul in the struggle for self-preservation.” Humor is not about ignoring or obscuring reality, but rather a means of overcoming it. A source of power that could potentially change them. The laughter goes away. Laughter is liberating.

Or, as my Victor says: “Laughter lifts the fog of sadness, at least for a moment.”

Source: Blick