Yesterday I heard a sound like a cannon shot and later discovered, from the UPS man, that it was my car—or, more rightly, that a mammoth tree branch had destroyed the windshield of my car (really, not one inch of the glass was left intact even though it “held” in place), bent the car’s steel roof (despite that it’s a Volvo), sheered off its side mirror, and dusted the interior with snowflakes of glass.
I was sad. I was frustrated. Who wouldn’t be?
In general, I do not use social media to share my troubles, but in the case of my car I simply began with an honest question of how to clean up snowflakes of glass, and then, inexplicably, I began to make light of the situation.
Okay, if you know me, you will not think this response was inexplicable. Humor is something I’ve learned to call on, even in dire circumstances, to help frame my perspective.
While humor has to be handled with care, it has been shown to be a statistically significant coping mechanism that goes far beyond providing just the means “to cope.” This is true for individuals. It is even true for groups. Says Dacher Keltner in Born to Be Good,
A deadlocked negotiation between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators took a dramatic turn toward common ground and compromise after they had laughed together….With executives, laughter early in negotiations…sets the stage for mutually beneficial bargaining. (p 135)
Why does laughter have such power?
Something strikes us as funny when it violates, benignly, the way things are. This gentle violation becomes a gateway for open-mindedness. As Keltner further explains,
Laughter is not a sign of denial of trauma, as widely assumed, but an indicator of a shift towards a new perspective enabled by the imagination” (p 143)
and
Laughter indicates that alternatives to reality are possible.” (p 137)
Now the interesting thing is that challenges of all kinds, even ones that are clearly destructive (like the shattering of my car’s windshield), are already often experienced as a violation. Not a benign one. Indeed, the hurtful challenge has come to us and stated in no uncertain terms, “Alternatives to reality are possible.”
Laughter is our way of answering back. “Yes, alternatives to reality are possible, Sir Challenge. But this is not unilateral. You and I are in a position to negotiate.”