A Funny Way To Cope

A Funny Way to Cope

You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy.

John 16:20

Janet, the consummate hostess, wanted to impress the new pastor’s family with an elaborate dinner. She cooked all day and even had her teenage son help to serve the meal. All went well until the main course. As the young server was bringing in the crown roast, the kitchen door hit him from behind and the platter flew across the room. The hostess froze, regained her composure, then commanded, “Dear, don’t just stand there. Pick up the roast, go in the kitchen, and get the other one!”

Humor helps us cope—not just with the trivial but even with the tragic. Psychoanalyst Martin Grotjahn, author of Beyond Laughter, notes that “to have a sense of humor is to have an understanding of human suffering.” Charlie Chaplin could have said the same thing. Chaplin grew up in the poorest section of London. His mother suffered from serious mental illness, and his father died of alcoholism when Charlie was just five. Laughter was Chaplin’s tool for coping with life’s losses. Eating a boiled leather shoe for dinner in his classic film, Gold Rush, is more than a humorous scene. It is an act of human triumph, a monument to the coping power of humor.

One does not need to be a professional comedian, however, to benefit from comedy. Viktor Frankl gives another example of how humor can empower a person to cope with life, even amid horrendous circumstances. In Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, he speaks of using humor to survive imprisonment during World War II. Frankl and another inmate would invent at least one amusing story daily to help them cope with their horrors.

According to Bill Cosby, “If you can find humor in anything, you can survive it.” Researchers agree. Studies reveal that individuals who have a strong sense of humor are less likely to experience burnout and depression and are more likely to enjoy life in general—even when carrying heavy burdens.

No matter what kind of time your marriage is in, be intentional in the near future about sharing a point of laughter with your spouse. Study your spouse’s funny bone and cater to it! It will make you laugh together, and that will help you cope together.

[The human] race has unquestionably one really effective weapon —laughter.

—Mark Twain