The Power of Humour
Viktor Frankl's 'Man’s Search For Meaning': Humour
“The attempt to develop a sense of humour and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent.”
Yesterday, I forgot my own address. I was in a very friendly Post Office, and I couldn’t remember my own postcode. The spirited lady behind the counter just laughed at me. She even got the other customers to laugh at me. She pointed at me, joyfully sharing my news with the small queue of humans growing behind me. As I floundered, a little stressed that I was holding other people up with my temporary amnesia, she wisely proclaimed to the Post Office that ‘you’ve got to laugh. It’s the only way.’ Quite right.
Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl, would wholeheartedly agree. As he writes in his memoir, Man’s Search For Meaning, humour gives us the power to transcend our circumstances, even the hell-on-earth of a Nazi Death Camp:
“Humour was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humour, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.”
It’s powerful stuff.
Indeed, without the humour of my students and colleagues, I am not sure I would have survived fifteen years in a state secondary comprehensive school. And I must confess: the humour is not always the most wholesome. It is sometimes beautifully cynical, a little dark, and often very mischievous. I imagine it is of a similar ilk to the humour found in many hospitals, prisons, fire stations, ambulances, army barracks, care homes, and hospices. And hopefully in many families. It has a healing power.
Fortunately, I live in The North of England, where a key Love Language is Taking The Piss Out of Everything, which is something I sometimes forget, much to my detriment, when engaging with some of the more earnest folk of earth. Indeed, such confrontations are usually met with some form of awkwardness, moral policing, eye-brow raising, or a verbal scolding. Interestingly, these folk tend not to work in schools, hospitals, prisons, fire stations, ambulances, army barracks, care homes, and hospices – but are more often the Actors, Commentators, and Influencers of The Glitterati. Which is not surprising, as another important role of humour is its power to subvert. Perhaps that is why people who have the power in our societies, institutions, offices, churches, temples, mosques, families, and friendship groups, tend to be a little terrified (or even outraged) by certain forms of humour. In short, they are scared of humour that offends the status quo. Understandably so, as such folk have more status to lose. It’s not just a joke. It’s survival!
Yes, humour stirs things up. It prompts uncertainty, rebelliousness, and humiliation. Humour can be annoyingly humbling (I find it interesting that humour, humiliation, and humbling share the same root word - hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm). Humour has a naughty way of exposing, triggering and dismantling our fragile egos. Indeed, I think one of the most instructive, character-forming elements of being a secondary school teacher, is that I am at the mercy of some very funny, brutally witty, observant, authentic, and highly skilled Teenagers who don’t (necessarily, and understandably) give a shit about Religious Studies, or find me very amusing.
And my sincere[ish] hope and prayer, is that, as I crawl through the next fifteen years of teaching (God help me!), I learn, as an act of deep self-love and self-knowledge, to laugh at myself more and more, as a way of accepting my flaws, falls, and folly with more grace, space, and humility.
I am going to end this post with a powerful piece of comedy gold, from A British Fool who knows how to speak to a room full of worldly glamour and power, at The Beverly Hilton, Los Angeles, in the year 2020. Let us, like Ricky, not suck-up to the rich, famous, and beautiful elites of our Hollywoods (wherever, and whatever, they are), but instead, have a laugh at them. Or as Christ puts it:
‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’