Living with COVID-19: Let’s Laugh So We Don’t Cry
This article discusses myths about humor during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic we are experiencing now. Tragedies trigger jokes and we’ve inserted jokes and quotes throughout, hopefully to bring a smile. And, as always, we invite you to share your stories and humor. Send to j.hilburtdavis@comcast.net
1. MYTH: This COVID-19 virus is nothing to laugh at.
We agree that what we are experiencing now is tragic, scary, and filled with unknowns. But there is a growing body of research that shows that laughter in the face of tragedy is extraordinarily therapeutic, mentally and physically; just the act of smiling puts us in a more positive frame of mind. In fact, laughing seems to shield us from calamity's effects. Earlier philosophers and psychiatrists (Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Freud) suggested that laughing was both a way of taking control and bonding with others. When we laugh at a COVID-19 “Saturday Night Live” skit or a Stephen Colbert quip (“Home is where the heart is. Also everything else for the foreseeable future”),we feel connected.
Because humor is an important evolutionary trait, without it we wouldn’t be able to cope “in this complex world we’ve created” (Ha!: The Science of When We Laugh and Why by Scott Weams). Humor is a pressure valve; it softens the blow and serves an important function during tough times like these. So, not only is it all right to laugh at COVID-19, it’s essential as an invaluable weapon against a common enemy. Enjoy those silly jokes, laugh at the toilet paper cartoons, have a chuckle at the bad haircuts, and even add some of your own and pass them along. In fact, actively creating humor is more effective than passively appreciating humor—take an active role. The Stanford Newsreports that Stanford researcher Andrea Samson and psychology professor James Gross ran an experiment where subjects were asked to improvise jokes. They found that people who made any kind of quip benefited, with both increases in positive emotions and decreases in negative emotions: "If you are able to teach people to be more playful, to look at the absurdities of life as humorous, you see some increase in wellbeing." It’s our way of saying “we’re in this together.”
2020 is a unique leap year. It has 29 days in February, 300 days in March and 10 years in April.
Since everybody has now started washing their hands, the peanuts at the bar have lost their taste.
I sneezed in the bank today; it was the most attention I have received from the staff in the last 10 years.
2. MYTH: Humor has nothing to do with health.
Humor has much to do with our health. As noted in an Atlanticarticle, “Funny or Die,” a review of studies found that among elderly patients, laughter significantly alleviated the symptoms of depression. Another study found that firefighters who used humor as a coping strategy were somewhat protected from PTSD. And, yet another found that subjects who were shown a funny video displayed higher pain thresholds than those who saw a serious documentary and postsurgical patients requested less pain medication after watching a funny movie of their choosing. There is even some evidence that suggests that laughter affects the immune system by leading to a slight and temporary boost in certain immune cells.
Earlier proponents of laughter and health include Patch Adams and Norman Cousins. Patch Adams, best known for his work as a medical doctor and a clown, believes that laughter, joy and creativity are an integral part of the healing process, and with the help of an amazing group of friends, he founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971 in order to address in a holistic way the problems of the way health care was delivered for all people. His life story in Gesundheit: Good Health Is a Laughing Matter provided the background for the 1998 semi-biographical comedy-drama film “Patch Adams” starring Robin Williams.
Norm Cousins, who was editor of the Saturday Reviewand author of Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient,explored the healing effects of humor while hospitalized with a debilitating disease. His book is an account of how humor repeatedly triumphed over his pain and of Cousins’ eventual road back to a productive life.
The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH) is a professional society whose members are interested in the application of humor and laughter in medicine, social work, psychotherapy, and education. Recognizing that humor provides innumerable health benefits including stress reduction, greater resilience, greater pain tolerance, enhanced immune function, and enhanced trust, empathy, and connection, they are continually “learning from one another about using humor to positively influence health and human performance,” and encouraging all to work more of it into our lives. www.aath.org
Although more recent reviews have found the evidence linking humor to physical benefits less conclusive than originally believed, the “psychologicalcoping mechanism that helps humor relieve anxiety and stress continues to show up strong in empirical studies” (Current Directions in Psychological Science). In other words,people who can find humor in difficult situations are much better off. Even on his deathbed Oscar Wilde found humor when he (supposedly) said: “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.” Two other bonuses of being funny: it may make us smarter since it exercises the mind, and both sexes consistently rank sense of humor as one of the most important traits in a mate!
Remember the good old days, when washing your hands didn't take three hours?
An Esplanade resident is driving on the highway. His wife calls him on his cell phone and, in a worried voice, says, “Henry, be careful! I just heard on the radio that there was a madman driving the wrong way on Route 93!” Herman responds, “Not just one. There are hundreds!”
A man walks into a bar and goes up to the bartender and says "I'll have a Corona please, hold the virus."
3. MYTH: It’s much too soon to joke about this awful disease.
Mark Twain noted that “humor is tragedy plus time” and he was right—timing is critical.
The latency period of the time between a tragedy and when the jokes begin has been studied. Research in the Social Psychology and Personality Sciencejournal has calculated the joke cycle that followed the destruction of Hurricane Sandy to be “about 36 days before jokes became funny…. humorous responses … rose, peaked, and eventually fell over the course of 100 days.” There’s a Goldilocks factor in the joke cycle; too little and too much distance from the crisis and things are not funny.
One study identified the latency period between the 1986 Challenger Seven disaster and this joke —"What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronauts”-- to be 17 days. The death of Princess Diana was much shorter and the World Trade Center 18 days. After September 11, humor took a temporary break before SNL, Jon Stewart, and others went back on the air. The Onion returned with one of these headlines on September 26: “Bush Sr. Apologizes to Son For Funding Bin Laden in ’80s.” The public was ready and relieved to be able to laugh again.
And, social media, often described as the “wild west,” has shattered a lot of these assumptions about timing. So, as we’ve seen, it didn’t take long for jokes to get started this time. And, sometime in the future (not too far in the future we hope) COVID-19 will be in the distant past and the jokes will be too old to be funny.
The 45th day of isolation and it feels like Las Vegas in our house. We’re losing money every minute; drinks are acceptable at any hour and no one has any idea what day it is.
To the people who bought 20 bottles of soap leaving none on the shelves for others, you do realize that to stop getting Coronavirus, you need other people washing their hands too.
Pence was hospitalized after a particularly stressful Corona Virus debriefing meeting. When he was discharged, his doctor explained to a puzzled Trump that Pence had angina. Trump responded that that was impossible, “Men don’t have angina.” He was even more confused when the doctor told him that Pence had acute angina.
4. MYTH: There are topics, like COVID-19, that should never be joked about.
To quote John Cleese, the British comedian and actor of Monty Python fame, “Nothing is too serious for humor.” Finding humor in difficult situations is challenging and some topics are more challenging than others. But the more challenging, the more important it is for humor to find the “crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in” (“Anthem” by Leonard Cohen).
Sarah Silverman says it best in a clip from the documentary "The Last Laugh," in which Jewish comedians Mel Brooks, Rob Reiner, and Sarah Silverman talk about the purpose of finding humor in the most harrowing stories of survival like the holocaust. Silverman states that “comedy shines a light in the dark places and darkness can’t live where light shines. If we don’t talk about taboo subjects, they stay in the dark and become even more dangerous.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/the-thing-about-a-joke-about-the-holocaust-is-jewish-comedians-on-the-darkest-comedy/2017/04/21/b16dc8b6-26d9-11e7-928e-3624539060e8_video.html
Some factors should be considered when joking about the most disturbing of tragedies. For example, reactions to “dark” jokes depend on:
§ How close we are to the tragedy (joke cycle)
§ How close we are related to the “victims” (psychological distance)
§ Who the butt of the joke is (should not be the victim)
§ Who the teller of the joke is (should be of the same ethnic group or gender as the object of the joke)
§ How skillful the comedian is -- joke must be truly funny.
So the butt of the COVID-19 jokes should not be the victims of the virus but can be the rest of us who are “only” suffering the shelter-in-place ruling. Here are some examples:
My body has absorbed so much soap and disinfectant lately, now when I pee, I clean the toilet.
In case you’ve lost track of the days, it’s April 87th.
Apparently the first person in Milwaukee has died because of the Coronavirus. In his house they found 1000 cans of tuna fish, 50 pounds of pasta, 80 pounds of rice, 300 toilet rolls and 50 bottles of hand sanitizer which he had panic purchased from the supermarket and stock piled "just in case." The whole lot collapsed and buried him.
Appropriate guidelines are found in the “Humane Humor Rules” (in The Language of Humor: An Introduction by Don and Emily Nilson). In the “wild west” of social media they are often forgotten but offer a civilized place to start:
§ Never target a quality that a person cannot change
§ Target yourself (i.e., use self-deprecating humor)
§ Target your own ethnic group or gender, but not other ethnic groups or genders
§ Never target the victim
§ Target a strength so that it empowers rather than humiliates
§ Be sure that there is adequate spatial, temporal, and psychological distance before making fun of a tragedy.
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself…. James Thurber
“I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.” Flannery O’Connor
If I get quarantined for two weeks with my wife and I die, I can assure you it was not the virus that killed me.
So, remember: stay safe, practice social distancing, wear a mask, and every day notice, enjoy, and apply humor. For as William James said, “Common sense and humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” And, right now, we need to dance more!
----Jane Hilburt-Davis