What Laughter Required

There are times when laughter is not a reaction, but a rebellion.
When the world grows heavy and grief sits at every table, laughter becomes something sacred—a pulse of light refusing to die out. It is easy to laugh when life is kind, but what of the laughter that rises through tears, through exhaustion, through despair? That kind of laughter costs something. That is what laughter requires.

In every culture, laughter has been both shield and song.
The enslaved sang through sorrow, turning pain into rhythm. Prisoners whispered jokes in cells to remind themselves they were still human. Refugees told stories with punchlines in tents lit by dying candles. Even in tragedy, people found ways to make joy survive, because joy was proof that suffering had not won.

In ancient Greece, theater held both tragedy and comedy in the same breath. To laugh after weeping was not contradiction—it was completion. In West African villages, griots laced humor into their tales so that truth could be swallowed without bitterness. In Indigenous traditions, trickster figures like Raven and Coyote taught through laughter, revealing wisdom that tears could not. To laugh was to endure. To endure was to remember.

Because laughter, at its core, is not denial—it is defiance.

It says: I have seen the darkness, and I will still choose light.
It is the sound of resilience wearing a smile.

There is a kind of laughter that is soft, private, and tender. The kind that escapes when someone you love says something ordinary, and for a moment, the world feels right again. Then there is the laughter that bursts forth in chaos—wild, uncontrollable, freeing. Both are necessary. One heals quietly, the other loudly. Together, they remind us that joy is not an absence of pain, but a way of surviving it.

The poet Hafiz once wrote, “Laughter is the soul’s way of reminding itself to breathe.” That line might as well be humanity’s anthem. Across centuries, laughter has filled the same role as prayer—it connects us to something larger than our suffering. It does not erase pain, but it softens its edges. A laugh shared between strangers can dissolve walls faster than reason ever could.

We often speak of strength as stoicism, endurance, silence. But perhaps strength is sometimes found in sound—in the moment a child giggles through hunger, or a mother chuckles while sweeping the dust of ruin, or two friends find something absurd in the middle of heartbreak. Laughter is the language of those who refuse to surrender to sorrow. It is the echo of hope when words fail.

Even in history’s darkest chapters, laughter survived. In the trenches of World War I, soldiers told jokes to ease the waiting between battles. During the Great Depression, comedians became prophets, reminding people to find dignity in humor. In concentration camps, survivors later recalled moments when laughter—brief, trembling—broke through the horror like a shaft of light. It did not diminish the suffering; it testified to their humanity.

To laugh, then, is to say: I am still alive.
And in that declaration, there is quiet power.

Today, our laughter wears many faces. It flickers through screens, bursts across cafes, fills late-night phone calls between weary friends. It heals in memes and stand-up shows, in group chats that turn heartbreak into humor. Sometimes it’s gentle, sometimes sharp, but always it carries an ancient wisdom: that laughter is not escapism—it is endurance wearing joy’s disguise.

In moments of chaos, laughter slows the world long enough for us to breathe. It reminds us that despair is not the only language we speak. That we can still find beauty in absurdity, tenderness in imperfection, light even in the ruins.

What laughter requires, then, is not ignorance, but courage. It asks that we look at life’s cruelty and still choose to create joy. That we hold grief in one hand and laughter in the other, knowing both are holy.

And maybe, that is what makes laughter so human—it refuses to wait for happiness. It blooms in the cracks, grows through sorrow, and insists that life, even bruised and trembling, is still worth living.

So the next time laughter comes—uninvited, unexpected, unstoppable—let it.
Let it echo through the corridors of your ribs like a hymn.
Because laughter is not what happens after we heal.
It is how we begin to.