The Light on the Hill seems a bit dimmer as of late. I see a lot of people on campus who appear to be struggling day to day just to get by. It may just be finals approaching, it could be the awareness of the weather irregularities and the general state of things or it could be the economic situation straining our personal finances. I get a sense that a lot of people are feeling the blues, ennui or, perhaps, nothing at all.
It's funny when you arrive at the point in your life where you have no choice but to laugh. This point arrived for me six years ago. During that time there weren't many authority figures whom I trusted in visible sight, so I retreated to where I believed the truth−tellers were at work — the arts. I do remember, however, with great clarity, walking down the hallway one day and having one of my teachers addressing me by name and telling me to smile.
It has taken me this long to understand what was being conveyed to me then and I find it exquisitely brilliant. I think this ancient truth is best embodied in the symbol of the Laughing Buddha. To those who aren't already familiar, Buddha merely means "one who has achieved a state of perfect enlightenment." Everyone has the capacity to become Buddha. I feel now as if I had been let in on a secret back then from someone who'd been traveling on this path to enlightenment a bit longer.
Why does Laughing Buddha seem so happy all the time? Doesn't Buddha know that the world is, as Russell Tyrone Jones put it, "a big ball of fire and it's just burning with no feeling?" It seems clear to me now that Buddha does not laugh oblivious to what is going on, but precisely because of what is going on. In the face of the abyss, the weapon of choice is laughter, due to its essential capacity to uplift, defuse tension and bring people together.
Laughter is a natural anti−depressant. One of the cruelest jokes to me was the rapid rise of the pharmaceutical drug industry just as I was ready to lose my mind. We came of age in the era of Prozac, Xanax, Adderall and the like. We know that many of our peers or ourselves are on medication for various reasons, and it just seems to be the way things are nowadays. If I had to point out a trend, it would be that the friends of mine with iconoclastic tendencies have been the ones medicated earlier. But that is indeed just my perspective. More essentially, I've found that my moods are naturally elevated after joking back and forth with other people, so I try to do so as much as I can. Scientifically, laughter has been linked to the activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex region, which happens to release endorphins.
Laughter can defuse tension. Sigmund Freud in his book "The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious" (1905) described jokes as allowing the conscious to express thoughts forbidden by society. Moreover, Freud believed that laughter was a way to release feelings sexual and hostile in nature. More recently, laughter has been studied in relation to stress levels. M.H. Abel found that among undergraduates, the "high sense of humor" group experienced less stress and anxiety compared to the "low sense of humor" group faced with a similar number of everyday problems. Likewise, I've found laughter to be remarkably effective at preserving my peace of mind.
Laughter is contagious. As we grow older, our self−preservation instincts seem to push us to detach ourselves whenever we sense the blues in other people (thankfully, some sing them). Yet on the flip side, many of us are able to retain the ability to laugh with one another. Recent studies involving fMRI have found that when another person laughs, neurons in our own brains fire as if we ourselves are laughing. It appears as if laughing allows us to coexist joyfully. The type of laughter might change, we may laugh more out of sorrow than joy, but laugh enough and these tend to blur together.
The essential nature of laughter is clear to me when I look at people in the twilight stages of their lives. Here, it is easy to find the ones who understand Laughing Buddha. The ones who've attained this understanding radiate from within, as if they've preserved their inner child. The ones who haven't appear to have checked out early, if only for the time being. I hope to stay here alert until the end as one of these radiant beings. So regardless of finals, the weather or the zeros in your bank account, I'll be laughing and I hope you are here laughing with me.
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Hai-Jung Theresa Kim is a senior majoring in psychology.
