Laughing

by Anisa

“HA!” A great gust of air explodes out of your mouth, sending rollicking peals of laughter echoing for miles around. The sound carries away with it your tension and worry, leaving behind relief and exhilaration. This basic human reaction is universal—people around the world may not be able to communicate through words, but they can connect in laughter. It stretches across cultures and languages, through oceans and borders, from days-old infants to the oldest person alive. Derived from the Middle English laughen, from the Old English hlæhhan, believed to come from the sound of laughter itself, a laugh is one of the most primitive expressions of emotion. It is automatic, it comes out without our consent, and it is insuppressible.

People laugh for a multitude of reasons; for humor, anger, nervousness, fear, embarrassment, or tragedy. We laugh when we hear a joke, when we see someone else fall, when we have no other reaction in us.

When we are anxious, a fit of laughter can alleviate our stress; when we are sad and vulnerable, a few good chuckles can brighten us up; and when we are simply in the course of our everyday lives, a round of booming “HA-HA”s, or even a few short giggles, can add just what we need to keep going.

In a world where there is often too much stress, a laugh is more important than ever. It’s a simple action, really. All you need is yourself and the air around you. You gulp in a lot of air, very quickly, preferably through your mouth, filling up your lungs and expanding your chest, and then you simply let it all back out, forcefully and in short bursts, with sound effects.

This is part of the reason why it is so good for you: it forces you to breathe deeply, and often. It increases the heart rate and stimulates circulation. It increases the production of feel-good endorphins in your brain, while also decreasing the production of stress hormones.

It helps so much that many hospitals offer Laugh Therapy to raise the quality of life for their patients, proving that laughter actually is the best medicine. The relieving effects of laughter have been known almost as long as laughter has been around. It is mentioned in proverbs in the Bible, and was already being used in medical situations as early as the thirteenth century.

Almost 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln said, “With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”

I have often felt the relieving benefits of laughter myself. I remember distinctly a time, a few months ago, when I had not laughed for days. It was a horrible week; it was journalism deadline, I had a math, chemistry, and APUSH test, I had two jobs, piano, and AcDec to make time for, and I was just barely keeping up. I was cooped up inside almost all day, every day, and I barely saw my friends outside of class.

Then, while I was walking to yet another classroom, a friend said something funny – it wasn’t even that funny – and I laughed. I laughed so hard and so freely I could literally feel the tension coming out of my shoulders. I had no idea how tightly I had been holding myself, until that moment when it lifted and went away. Minutes later I was back in class and back in my hectic week, but my mood was substantially better. That less-than-a-minute of laughter gave my body what it had been craving for: release, oxygen, and a good, heavy heartbeat. It gave my mind what it had been craving for as well: peace, calmness, and sanity.

“The most wasted of all days is one without laugher.” – E.E. Cummings

Laughter is highly contagious. Just watching someone else laugh makes you feel like laughing yourself; it’s why we often laugh when in the company of others, or when watching other people, sometimes people we don’t even know, laugh.

Laughing is also highly individual. It is an expression of emotion that is unique to each of us. No two people experience the exact same emotions; no two people laugh exactly the same. Even the same person never laughs quite exactly the way they’ve ever laughed before; though it may sound similar, a new laugh is always just that – new. Technically speaking, each laugh is slightly different in the amount of breaths a person takes, in the exact pattern of sounds made, in the length of each sound or breath, in each little mechanical process. But more than that, each laugh differs in the exact emotion that it manifests at that unique moment.

My friends often tease me about my laughs; yes, laughs, plural. I have several distinctly different types of laughter, as I have been informed.
There is the seconds-long low chuckle.
There is the high, trilling giggle that bubbles up and rolls out from my throat for the mildly amusing.
There is the slightly louder, longer, squinted-eyes chortle that lasts half a minute or more when something is humorous.
And then, there is the way louder, way longer, wonderfully out-of-control, head-thrown-back, shoulder-shaking, body-quaking, crouched-over, grabbing-my-aching-stomach, mouth-stretched wide, falling-on-the-floor, tears-in-my-eyes, real LAUGH that lasts for minutes on end and occurs only when something is truly and outrageously hilarious.
People make fun of me for that. They say I laugh too hard, too loudly, too easily, or too long. But my only response is more laughter.

So there you go. Scientifically speaking, laughing is good. Laughing pumps your heart and invigorates your blood flow, expands your lungs and increases your oxygen intake, releases the feel-good chemicals in and tension out. But more than all of that, it keeps you sane. It keeps your stress levels manageable and your happiness high. It lets you relax, even when you’ve got a lot going on.

So, maybe you’ve got a million things to do today. Maybe you feel like all your work is crushing down on you. Maybe you have a ton of things to worry about. Maybe you just need a good laugh to put your mind at peace. So go ahead. Laugh. It’ll make you feel better – I promise.

“Laugh uncontrollably – it clears the mind.” – Dove chocolate wrapper