Opinion essay: Is humour necessary?

Is humour necessary?

In general, we can claim with certainty that humour is, as a matter of fact, a good thing. Someone could come up with the idea that, occasionally, we need to be serious to focus on what’s essential. But we won’t talk about that. Our question is if humour isn’t simply good, but even necessary, vital. My statement is: humour is just like medicine. Why do I say that and what does that mean? Let me explain.

In the first place we need to determine which advantages humour grants us. We’ll examine them from two different points of view. On the one hand, there is the social and mental point of view. When we laugh, which is the consequence of humour, we attract other people to ourselves. We relate laughter with enjoyment. When we notice someone is laughing, we just can’t help but asking what was so funny, because we want to experience the same feeling of amusement. Thus, we get the chance to know more people, to potentially create new friendships. And once a relationship is established, humour even helps keep strengthening it. Furthermore, by laughing heartily we defuse not only our conflicts with other people but also our inner tensions. We add more joy to our life, we relieve the stress we have been accumulating and release all our negative emotions, like fear and anxiety.

On the other hand, humour enhances our physical condition. Scientists have discovered that laughter is actually healthy. Aside from the biological causes of the mental advantatges I mentioned earlier (decrease of stress hormones level, relaxing muscles, etc.) it actually has permanent positive effects on our bodies. By laughing we increase the production of immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies which ends up in a better resistance against diseases. In addition to that, having a good laugh stimulates the blood flow and improves the function of the blood vessels. That means that humour even participates in preventing heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems.

Now I’d like to ask you a final question. Is medicine necessary? I’d say it isn’t, we can live without medicine being protected by our own body’s defense system. But it definitely optimizes our life, allowing us to live longer and qualitatively better. And humour does the same. Probably none of us would die without laughing, but our natural tendency is to enjoy life and long for any improvement we can achieve. And that’s just fine. After all, we are all human.