The Laughing Crying Connection

The laughing and crying connection. Hey, good people, Dr. Brad Miller here with the Cancer and Comedy Podcast. This is the podcast where we look to help you cope with hope. If you're a cancer-impacted person, to effect healing with hope and humor. We're all about turning the grim of cancer into the grin of a fulfilled life.

My story is that I was diagnosed with cancer at Christmas time of 2022 and decided to leverage my head to laugh to keep from crying. And then I had to leverage my pain into something productive, which meant integrating my 43 years of pastoral ministry with my doctoral degree in transformational leadership, and my love of comedy and laughter, to produce the Cancer and Comedy Podcast. We hope that you'll follow us and get connected to our community at CancerAndComedy.com/follow, because we truly do believe that a cheerful heart is good medicine.

So, this grandma and her three-year-old grandson were at the beach, and grandma was given the job of taking care of the little boy. They were playing near the waves of the ocean as the waves were coming in. Suddenly, a rogue wave comes in, and grandma watches as the wave scoops up the little boy and carries him out to sea. The old woman starts crying and screaming, "Dear Lord, dear Lord, please, please, please bring my baby back, bring my grandson back, please bring him back." And the very next wave washes up the little boy, unhurt, right at the feet of grandma. The woman looks up to the heavens and says, "Lord, he had a hat."

Man, I want to talk to you today about the correlation between laughing and crying, which has been very pertinent in my life. This particular week, there are a couple of things that happened to me that I think are relevant to this topic of laughing and crying. I'm recording this in the middle of February 2024.

I had the honor of a retired pastor, and I also had one of my favorite uncles pass away. I talked about him at some length in our last episode; you can check that out if you care to. But I had his funeral, and I was asked to conduct it. That meant spending some great time with my aunt, his wife, and my cousins, his children, and many other relatives and friends.

And my uncle was a very popular fellow; he was very active as a school teacher and as a coach. In fact, he was a Hall of Fame tennis coach. So there were dignitaries in the tennis world from around our state involved. There were some very tough moments, some deep sobs and tears, but there was also a lot of laughter and a lot of crying.

Because when you have a funeral, I feel like they're kind of the best, really. When you have those moments, when you have good memories that bring a smile and laughter to your face. And then also, you remember you're going to miss that person, you're going to miss them. And that's certainly part of what we do during the funeral services.

We talk about the new life and eternal life as well, and we believe in that promise. But there are moments of honor and moments of sadness. And it was poignantly kind of a part of the service; we were able to share a note that my uncle wrote to his daughter and granddaughter on the occasion when he was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame. His wife, daughter, and granddaughter were able to attend that, and it was a big honor, a big banquet and so on. Afterward, he sent his granddaughter a note, and she read this at the funeral.

And in the note, he just said, "I really want to thank my three favorite girls for being here with me at this banquet to honor me for going into the Hall of Fame." But then he also had an apology in the same letter about how, "I hope you understand why I did what I did."

When you were growing up, and meaning was away from home so much, and things of that nature. So there are kind of two sides to that little story, aren’t there? There's the poignancy and a little bit of sadness of being away from home when people you know, the family were involved with things, being away from home, coaching, and other things that he was doing. But also the joy and the laughter that she wanted to share during the service that he loved and appreciated. Love, laughter, crying, they're all connected.

There's nothing that happened this week, I just got kind of a little bit of a kick out of it as well. February 14, 2024, was a unique day in many ways. Ash Wednesday, for Christian folks, occurred on that day, and it was also St. Valentine's Day. St. Valentine's Day, you know, traditionally and historically, is about the time of love. St. Valentine helped lovers to escape and be together, as was the tradition of the actual story of St. Valentine's.

And of course, Valentine's Day is a day of love and lovers, and joy and excitement and exhilaration of that. So, if you believe in love and believe in romantic love, and so on, that brings a smile to your face. I know it does for me. But also, it's the very same day as Ash Wednesday, which Ash Wednesday is the time, in the Christian understanding, it's the first day of Lent, which is the weeks the 40 days leading up to Easter, which is March 31 this year.

And it's just the beginning of fasting and understanding that we are finite. You know, from ashes we have come, to ashes we will go, and people traditionally begin to fast. It's a time of repentance and penitence, which is asking to be forgiven of our sins, being mindful of your sinfulness. Dark stuff, basically, it's really dark stuff when on the very same day, February 14, we have both two sides of the same coin: love, exhilaration, smiles, and also, you know, penitence, death, doom, sacrifice, and repentance, and all that kind of thing. Kind of two sides of the same coin, in a sense, because that's where life is, isn't it? We have all kinds of things going on.

We are emotional beings, and we have all kinds of things going on. We talked about cancer and comedy, where cancer indicates some of that rough stuff that can send us into a depressed, crying, sobbing state if we allow it to. And the comedy is turning things around, how do you see things in a lighter sense? How do you utilize one to help to cope with the other and understand there is a place for both?

And this is what I've heard termed the Laughing Crying connection. You know, I use it for my own case; when I was diagnosed with cancer, I just had to laugh to keep from crying. You've heard that term before, and it's true. They are both expressive emotions, laughter and crying. I just did a little research on this in one of my books I'm really enjoying reading right now, and I'm going to be referring to this quite a bit in some of our upcoming episodes. It's the book "The Healing Power of Humor" by Allen Klein. It's considered one of the basic, really great books in this area of healing and humor.

Allen Klein has a section in his book which is all about the Laughing Crying connection. In fact, he quotes Kurt Vonnegut, an author who I enjoy, saying, "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh since there's less cleaning up to do afterward." And that's what we're going to talk a little bit about today—how there's a place for crying, and there's a place for laughter, and how ultimately laughter can help us to deal with the tears, you see.

Laughter and crying are similar, and they come from the same emotional source. Sometimes they even look and sound alike—you know, sometimes we can't really discern if someone's laughing or crying. They sometimes both produce tears.

For instance, they both produce kind of gut-level, guttural sounds many times, and they serve a similar function as a release. If you think about it, comedians often use terminology that has to do with pain in their comedy routines. When we laugh, we may use phrases like "I killed the audience" or "they died laughing." Those are common things we say when we laugh really hard, aren't they? We might also have the experience of laughing so hard that tears stream down our face, or that our sides hurt from laughing. You've heard those types of things or experienced them, right? Comedians and people in the entertainment world love that, and they know that it creates an emotional connection that makes it memorable.

And, you know, if you think about it, after both a heavy, gut-level laugh or a deep cry, there are somewhat similar facial expressions, and some of the experiences are similar too. After a big laugh or a big cry, people probably feel drained, you know, they feel drained.

Now, here's a nuance and a difference that Klein points out in his book that I think is important. They both provide a cathartic release, which we need—a cleansing that releases tension. But laughter can transcend suffering, while crying does not. That's one of the things I want to emphasize in our conversation today. There's a purpose for both; we need both. Tears of sadness will turn us inward and can lead us to feel sorry for ourselves.

I know some members of my family had moments when my uncle died, with almost inconsolable tears and sadness for a significant length of time. I've been there myself, experiencing moments of deep sadness and tears. When we have those moments, we are in deep, deep sadness and tears. We're thinking about how much we miss the other person, focusing on ourselves, and thinking about our personal release through tears. Laughter, on the other hand, focuses outwardly. It's about what the other person has done for us—making us feel good, making us laugh, giving us warmth. That's what makes us laugh when we think about them or others they've impacted.

A laughing person is open to the world, while a crying person only sees suffering. If we get stuck in our suffering, then we're going to be stuck in a place that's not very pretty. Tears focus on the pain and loss, while humor adds something different to the mix—it expands. Laughing doesn't mean we don't have pain anymore or that it cures our pain, but it expands our world, making it a little bit bigger.

So, if we think about our losses, setbacks, and the things that go wrong—cancer, illness, losing a job, or losing a marriage—this is not meant to minimize any of that. But if we add humor to it, we can deal with it. A lot of comedians, of course, use humor to deal with their situations that they've had in their life—bad relationships, bad health issues, circumstances that are not so good. And they use humor to do that. And I want to encourage you to kind of see your life in a similar way. It doesn't minimize the value of crying. It's important because we've got to cry to process pain and grief. We must let ourselves cry. And if you suppress the tears, then you're going to be in trouble. And that can really cause internal problems for a lifetime.

Crying is important and shouldn't be suppressed, but too much of it can be unhealthy. It can lead you to a depressed place as well, a place where you are no longer able to connect with others. I remember a woman I dealt with in my ministry who had the tragic circumstances of her college son being killed in a car wreck, and it was a bad scene. She was in incredible grief during the moment and in the weeks leading after. But I remember being with her a year or so later, and this is a common experience that others had with her. A year or so later after the accident happened, she was still broken up, almost unable to function. She would be in tears all the time, could talk about almost literally nothing but her son. And that's where she was at. People began to disengage from her because they couldn't take that it was becoming the constant theme of her life. It wasn't that she wouldn't share pleasant memories of her son; it was about the horror of the accident that happened. So, if that led her down a pathway which was not healthy.

So, for the product to get out here is the key: the laughter-crying connection. If we allow it, laughter gives us perspective. Too much crying can be unhealthy—tears don't always help, but humor can. So, we must cry, we must process things. There is a place for tears, but there is also a place for perspective. And humor can help us to gain perspective. Tears won't help you gain perspective; they take you inward. Humor can help you gain perspective. And I hope you'll take these things to heart here.

I always like to relate things to what I call a faith or break-it moment, which is a spiritual or biblical moment that I think applies here. There's a story in the Bible, in Genesis 18, about a guy named Abraham and his wife Sarah, who were promised by God to be the parents of the nation of Israel. That all sounds well and good, but Abraham and Sarah were getting up in years in Genesis chapter 18. It talks a little bit about this where Abraham encountered a man who asked, "Where is Sarah, your wife?" Abraham replied, "She's over there in the tent." The man then said, "I'm going to come back by this time next year. When I return, your wife Sarah will have a son." Sarah, who was listening behind the tent opening, eavesdropped on the conversation. This man was saying that she, despite her old age, would have a son. Sarah, who was very old at this time, way past the age for having babies, laughed out loud. She thought, "How could I, an old woman like me, get pregnant with this old man of a husband that I have, Abraham?" You can almost hear the laughter in her voice, saying, "No way is this going to happen!"

And God said to Abraham, who was represented by the man, "Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for God? I'll be back about this time next year, and Sarah will have a baby." But Sarah lied. She said, "I didn't laugh," because she was afraid, as it says in the Bible. But he said, "Yes, you did laugh." God said. The fearful part was like, "I caught you." But here's the thing, as the biblical understanding goes on in Genesis about how Sarah did have a son, his name Isaac, which can mean 'laughter,' and he went on to populate the children of Israel. And it was an incredible thing.

But you can see the tension there between the tears and the laughter. There's this crying-laughing connection, the absurdity of it all that happened with Sarah and with Abraham. That's what I want you to understand here today, friends, on this episode of "Cancer Comedy Airs." There's a connection between the crying and laughing, and it means that we sometimes just have to see the absurdity of life and find the points at which it hits us like a punch to the gut and still laugh about it.

Okay, I want to tell you one more story because I thought it was a cool story that kind of indicates this. You've got to take life and just roll with it, and you've got to let go, you know, to laugh to keep from crying. I was taking my mom out to lunch yesterday. We were in line at a restaurant, and I was waiting in line when I saw this little baby in the arms of her dad. The baby was situated in a way that she could see me, and she started giggling and cooing. This little 10-month-old baby, I suppose in my mind, was giggling, cooing, and making faces. Being a grandpa with little grandchildren, I started making faces back at her. I didn't even quite hear the conversation that was taking place between the woman behind the counter and the woman standing next to the dad holding the baby, who was this man's wife. I looked at her and saw that she was obviously very pregnant. The woman behind the counter and her were having a conversation about when she's going to have a baby, as people do. Then the wife of the man holding the little baby, who was making faces at me, said, "Well, I'm due about any time. And my daughter over here is going to be 10 months old pretty soon. That means we're going to have two babies under a year old." Both the women laughed out loud because the idea of having two babies under one year old was just one of those laugh-to-keep-from-crying moments.

Well, we're here to be helpful to you in your life, to help you navigate here at the Cancer Comedy Podcast. We're here to assist you in navigating whatever life brings to you, whether it's dealing with cancer or any other malady that has put you in a bad state. We're focused on helping people with cancer, but really any other challenge that life throws at you. We call it the Cancer Comedy Podcast because cancer represents all the bad things that can happen to us, and comedy is a relief from the bad stuff. We're here to be helpful to you.

I have a background in ministry and transformational leadership. I enjoy laughing and having fun, and we aim to be helpful to you. We'd like to build a community at CancerAndComedy.com. One of the best ways to do that is to follow us and connect with us at CancerAndComedy.com/follow the podcast. We appreciate you doing that. If you want to reach out to me personally, please email me at Brad@CancerAndComedy.com. We are here to help you navigate life when bad things happen, and they do. You don't have to stay stuck there; you can navigate through it. You can navigate your life, whether you're a cancer survivor or someone impacted by other challenges in life, and cope with hope. We like to call it "coping with hope and humor" in order to maintain health in your life and transform the grim into a grin. If I can help you or develop this Cancer and Comedy community, please reach out through our website, CancerAndComedy.com/follow, or email me at Brad@CancerAndComedy.com. Until next time, good people, I am Dr. Brad Miller, encouraging you to continue to embrace good humor in your life even as you deal with life's challenges, knowing that a cheerful heart is good medicine