The first month of 2010 has been rough, no way more so than the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. In the face of unmitigated tragedy, is there a role for humor?
“You know it is a catastrophe,” a colleague said to me, “when even the shock jocks don’t joke about it.”
The absence of crass one-liners capitalizing on other’s pain doesn’t mean that humor doesn’t have a real and vital role in helping people process and address tragedy. It’s been fascinating to watch some of the ways nurses, emergency response workers and the public at large have been reaching for laughter in the face of all that has happened.
For example, the Onion a wildly popular ‘news’ site which regularly satirizes events for laughs, used humor to point out that the earthquake was just the latest in a long string of tragedies to hit the island nation; raising consciousness and on some level spurring individuals to greater generosity. Here we see humor being used as social commentary and a call to action.
Anecdotal reports from the front lines tell of nurses and emergency service personnel finding relief in dark humor: a generator fails, plunging a makeshift facility into darkness, one nurse says to another nurse who’d been feeling unwell, “See, you look better already!” Not necessarily the funniest thing you’ve ever heard, but the laughter it provided defused a little of the tension in a situation that was already tense enough.
When to use humor is always a bit of a gamble. I tell people to consider their BET — the Bond they have with the person they’re joking with, the Environment they’re in when they tell it, and the Timing of the joke. All three have to be in alignment — otherwise, you’ll know it. The use of humor to relieve stress and allow front line workers to continue to provide the much needed care they’re giving is to not only be expected but celebrated. Sometimes we don’t judge a joke on whether it makes us laugh as much as does it give us the strength to keep doing what we need to do?
This is playing out on a grand scale in Haiti, and on an individual, personal level in the lives of every single person reading these words. We laugh because we can not stop; we joke because we must keep going. It takes strength and courage and support to face down the more horrific aspects of reality that nurses are confronted with every day: humor provides the boost we need to make it through.
And sometimes it makes us laugh, as well. What more could we ask for?
