To laugh is healthy – Laughter is the best medicine - we read and hear it often enough. And yet it remains something special - because what makes you laugh?
For my kids, that’s obvious: each and every joke by their dad (including his classics that have lasted for years and still make them hoot every time), silly cat moves, or tickling them... Always works.
And for many people I know it’s also clear: they get their laughs from their favorite comedy series on TV, for example, or a daily dose of old-fashioned jokes from a well-known tear-off calendar.
For me? I’ve noticed I like to be surprised. Sincere and pure humor, that works best for me. Someone who very sincerely says something that they themselves never meant to joke about, and it’s precisely the reason it makes people crack up. Just last week, a dear colleague came to present a new project and said her Dutch colleagues unfortunately couldn't be here in Brussels with her because, "as you know, they live in the Netherlands". 😉
It is just that sincerity and unpredictability that makes me so happy; And it’s exactly what I enjoy in improv. Because in improv, a player can never plan the joke in advance. Your fellow performer jumps in, the musician sets a different mood, the audience reacts unexpectedly to something trivial, ... In impro, you just never know in advance. You can't even predict whether you’ll be in the scene, let alone plan whether it's going to be funny, or exciting, or tragic, or ... Everything that happens, happens in the moment itself. After that, it's gone, remaining only in the memory of audience and players. As it does with my children, who still repeat the jokes days after an improv show (“That one's face!”, “When he made that sound!”, “That little story!”) and burst into laughter again.
So when I ask myself what makes me laugh, the best I can answer is this: something unexpected that is absurd and pure. And whenever I've had a good laugh, I feel wonderfully fulfilled and full of energy afterwards.
What makes you laugh? And how does it make you feel afterwards?
