I’ve started laughing at myself a lot more recently. Not in a self-deprecating kind of way, but something a bit more nuanced. I started writing this piece to try to figure out what laughter is1.

I laugh at myself when I think about stupid or embarrassing things that I’ve said in conversation, awkward interactions, or moments in which I’ve slipped below the bar. The scenarios replay in my mind and I zoom in, go frame-by-frame, and analyze under a microscope my actions that are so comedic in hindsight. Sometimes I can hear the laugh track play.

I laugh at myself when I think about the responsibility I have on my shoulders. I think about the people that I want to do right by, the time and effort that I need to put into a variety of problem sets, and the general direction in which I need to work towards in order to take on that responsibility.

I laugh at myself when I think about the infinite amount of desires I have as well as many of the possible realities that I could unfold into. I sometimes feel that it is a bit silly for me to estimate where I might be in 10 years from now, or even 1 for that matter, when I rarely even know what I’m going to be eating for dinner. If you had asked me one year ago where I thought I would be today, I wouldn’t have said anything remotely close to where I actually am. I’ve come to realize that a lot of my “what if’s” are ephemeral. I laugh at myself for yearning at all.

I’m learning that laughter is grace. A way of giving myself permission to let things pass.

Permission to not take things so seriously. Permission to let experiences pass through you rather than becoming them. I’ve spilled coffee on myself hundreds of times now because I don’t know how to properly secure coffee lids. My left New Balance is coffee-tinted and I’ve lost a couple of shirts to the cause now. Does that make me an idiot? Maybe, yes, but I don’t think about it too much because I’m too busy laughing at myself.

I’m learning that laughter is connection. It’s the shortest distance between people.

It brings people together by quickly dissolving barriers. There are the chuckles and brief bursts of laughter, but there really is magic hidden behind the belly-ache, nearly crying kind of laughter that you can share with others. When we laugh together, we’re poking at a shared truth without using words.

I’m learning that laughter is liberation. It’s a bridge between joy and pain.

I find myself laughing, not because things are inherently humorous, but because laughter helps me carry the things that are too heavy to hold. There are a lot of things to be upset about, but I would argue that there are just as many things to laugh about as well. Sometimes they’re the same thing. Neither feeling is right or wrong, I am just learning how to hold them all at the same time.

I feel that laughing is a muscle that I ought to exercise more. There is something really remarkable about being able to laugh about anything, as well as nothing at all. Not that everything has to be humorous, but because we should try our best to find humour in everything – especially ourselves.

I’m still not entirely sure what laughter is, but I know that it feels so freeing to laugh.

  1. Thank you Vin, for prompting me to think about this. ↩