I’m in my home office. I can hear my sons laughing in the room above me. My younger son, more in control of his emotions, delivers great one-liners with a straight face. My oldest absolutely delights in his brother and cackles like some sort of Amazonian bird. It’s a loud laugh — always louder than the joke calls for — brassy, joyful and free.
This is how it often begins in our house. Hearing that untamed laugh creates a snowball effect. My younger son joins in, snickering at his own joke, and I chuckle from my office below. I don’t even know what they are laughing about. When my husband returns home from the office, the dynamic begins again, but this time, my husband is the straight man and I, the adoring cackler.
We laugh a lot in our house. We titter at a rascally squirrel in our yard we’ve dubbed Keanu who likes to play with pinecones and stray bits of trash. We snort when we speak in accents for no apparent reason. We try to stay in character as long as we can, but someone will giggle, and the charade is broken — which, of course, makes us laugh. We laugh at the potato that looks like my sons’ Abuelito.
But mostly we laugh at ourselves.
We laugh when we aren’t perfect. We laugh at the absurdity that we would think we would be perfect.
There is a grace in this. There is a grace in laughter.
Twenty years ago, suffering from depression and anxiety, I visited a therapist weekly. After a few months of listening, the therapist decided to make a bold move. She repeated my latest story of woe back to me — as a comedy.
It could have not worked. It could have left me feeling unsupported and more vulnerable. But it didn’t. I heard what she was trying to tell me. My life was good and full and rich — and funny. I had been so focused on what wasn’t quite right, that I couldn’t enjoy the joy that was all around me.
In Ecclesiastes, we read that there is a time to weep and mourn, but also a time to laugh and dance (3:4). Laughter can even be a form of worship! In the Psalms of Ascents, songs sung as the Israelites returned from exile, we read, “Then our mouths were filled with laughter; our tongues sang for joy” (126:2). And in Proverbs we learn, “A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones” (17:22).
I am proud to have taught my sons something that I did not learn until adulthood: Perspective is everything — and laughter lights the path to a new perspective.
Catholic poet John O’Donohue wrote that laughter is a gift, “delighting in such foretaste of the wellsprings of eternal joy that ever bubble and flow.” The gift of laughter can give us a taste of heaven. Laughter can bring heaven to earth.
Northwest Catholic – June 2021