12.13.23
Older people laugh less. Ever wonder why?
I hadn’t, might never have, absent this deadline’s jab. You’re due ‘round in a few hours for our constitutional, what to discuss? Most everything we utter in maturity (before senility’s onset) has been composed in advance. Wisecracks only sound spontaneous.
Laughter, like everything humans do, has been studied to a fare-thee-well. Herodotus, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson all took their swings at the topic. I’ve nothing to add, if adding implies new. “There is nothing new under the sun,” grumped Ecclesiastes a few thousand years ago, and the word-wash has only gotten worse. No one would say anything if originality were a precondition.
The study of laughter even has a name – “gelotology”, from gelos, meaning laughter in old Greek. At least Wiki thinks it has a name; my Oxford English Dictionary hasn’t heard of gelotology, unless I’m querying wrong. The list of topics Wiki recognizes and my OED doesn’t is as long as an unimproved fingernail. How’s that for research!
Wiki’s definition of laughter tickles my funny-bone. The infelicity of Wiki’s prose makes me feel a Jane Austen by comparison, which is a fine feeling. “Laughter,” Wiki intones, “is a pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external and internal stimuli.” (Here an editor’s marginal exclamation – “Really?!” – accompanied by an aghast emoji.) “Laughter can rise from such activities as being tickled, or from humorous stories or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered an auditory expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness, or relief…” If that’s how grownups speak, what chance of literacy in our bairn!
Today’s focus is what Wiki might appellate the variability of risibility: “Why do older people laugh less?” (Dr. Wolfram Muffinkrammer, Ph.D, Harvard, 2002, ranks as today’s leading gerontological gelotologist.)
Partly, one conjectures, it’s the surprise factor. Old people, having seen more, know what’s coming, so are less startled. Laughter is the ostinato of the grade-school playground.
Partly, it’s the empathy factor. Old folks are likelier to feel others’ pain having experienced their own. Slipping on a banana peel you might break a hip, commencing your slide into debility, nonentity. That’s no laughing matter.
Partly it’s – call it – tragic awareness that intercepts our guffaws. The world is a less hilarious, joyous, promising place than we supposed. People are cruel. Shit happens. Hopes wreck on the shoals of accident. Loved ones die or get whacked. That beauty we almost tasted dangles, like Tantalus’ peach, just beyond our reach. Evil is fact, not hypothesis (read the headlines). Death is nearing – hush and you can hear its footsteps. None of these realizations conduce to “rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm,” unless they’re sobs.
Weeping is not the opposite of laughter; seriousness is – sitting still – attending silence’s sermon. Susceptibility to laughter varies – from eighty-nine eruptions daily, Wiki tells me, to zero. Though I love to laugh, I find myself toward the lower end of the spectrum, maybe half a dozen daily chortles if I’m with grandkids or reading Pickwick Papers. Puppy Henry has upped my production: his original antics, slyness, funny little face!
I pity those who never laugh. The devil, though he may cackle, can’t laugh. Neither Trump. Dead serious, they can’t detect the humor of their mereness or foresee their absence (wouldn’t that be nice!).
Laughter is generally considered healthful. My hypothalamus, subthalamus, endothelium, hippocampus, amygdala, cortisol and epinephrine hormones are said to like it. Laughing souls, researchers say, live longer. I’m working on it.