Why So Serious? An Ode to Laughter

Originally posted on the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

I met my best friend for lunch in Manhattan. Over salads and small talk, she mentioned that she and her husband had been going to stand-up shows. “Just something fun to do,” she said. Then she paused, looked at me, and added: “I don’t laugh like we used to. Remember back in the day?”

And I did. We laughed hard. The kind of laughing that leaves your stomach sore the next day.

She said she still giggles now and then. But not like before.

That conversation stuck with me. It made me realize that it’s not just busyness that’s taken over our middle-aged lives. Somewhere along the way, seriousness became a status symbol—proof that we’re responsible, successful, and worth listening to. How serious you are is how good you are.

But here’s the thing: the more serious we get, the more disconnected we feel—from each other, from ourselves, from laughter.

I had lunch with two other friends recently. No light catch-up. No good gossip. Just politics. Reactions to decisions. Frustrations. Fear. All valid—but I couldn’t help wondering: Are we making every conversation live in that space now?

I walked away wishing we had laughed—taken the time to find the funny.

Improv Was the Start. Stand-Up Took It Further

I started taking improv classes about a year ago. It was something to do after becoming an empty nester—part curiosity, part craving community. Improv has helped me loosen up, find my voice again, and remember how fun it is to play—like we did when we were kids.

The recent experiences with my girlfriends pushed me further.

I decided to try stand-up. And I did surprisingly well with it.

Yes—stand-up. At Gotham Comedy Club in Manhattan.

It still feels surreal to write that. But there I was on stage, mic in hand, poking fun at my life and watching a room full of strangers crack up.

The experience reminded me how much I need to laugh. But more than that, how much I love making people laugh. Especially when the joke’s on me…that’s my sweet spot—calling out the chaos and absurdity of everyday life and finding the funny in it.

We Don’t Do Funny Like We Used To

What if part of the problem is that we’ve outsourced laughter? We watch stand-ups, send memes, and follow accounts that make us laugh, but we rarely create it ourselves.

We wait for the laughter to come to us: packaged, safe, and shared. But laughing at real life—our own messy, weird, imperfect lives? That feels risky.

We’ve become afraid to be vulnerable, to poke fun at ourselves, and to laugh at our own expense—and each other—without it turning into something shameful or mean.

After one of my stand-up sets, a few people came up to me and said, “But you’re not dimwitted!” They were defending me—against my own jokes.

I wrote the set. I don’t think I’m dumb. I took stories from my childhood where I absolutely was dimwitted—and heightened them. That’s the point. That’s the fun. And it’s relatable.

Be Intentional About Laughing

We’re all carrying something—stress, deadlines, decision fatigue. It piles up. And if we’re not careful, it spills over—onto our coworkers, families, and friends.

We talk a lot about resilience. But what if part of resilience is being deliberate about laughing? About finding the funny. About making space for it—not as an afterthought, but as a habit.

Studies show that laughter triggers the release of endorphins, lowers stress hormones, and lights up the parts of the brain linked to connection and reward. It literally rewires us to feel better.

So maybe it’s worth penciling it in.

Find the funny in your own story—in the mess, the missteps, the moments that didn’t go as planned. That kind of laughter doesn’t distract you from life. It connects you to it. It softens the hard edges. It changes how you carry things.

The best laughs usually come from the stuff we try to hide. Nothing in our life should be off limits.

That lunch could’ve gone a hundred directions—we chose serious and focused on things out of our control. We left heavier.  If we’d chosen silly, we would have walked out feeling lighter.

What the Science Says

In the UK, doctors are now prescribing comedy for people struggling with depression and anxiety. Yes—comedy, instead of medication.

Participants take an 8-week course that helps them turn personal experiences into punchlines. Early results are promising: greater confidence, better emotional expression, and stronger social connections.

It’s not about becoming funny. It’s about becoming open. About loosening the grip on all the things we hold too tightly. It’s choosing silly–on purpose–when everything else screams serious.

We spend so much time trying to perfect our lives. Maybe it’s time we try laughing at them instead.

Will laughter fix everything? Not a chance. But it might remind us we’re still in there somewhere.