Too Soon? Comedy & Healing

Laughter Is Greater Than Outrage (Messed-Up But Managing #25)

There’s a moment as a comedian when, like Caesar, you have to cross the Rubicon and confront, head on, that looming question: too soon? And the short answer is…probably. For someone, it’s probably too soon. But for many others, maybe not. There are variables: who you are, where you are, how you say something, and who’s listening. These and other variables render “too soon” something of a moving target.

You could have someone in the front find your joke hilarious and someone in the back think it’s offensive. Same joke. Same place. Same moment. Very different outcomes. Last night, I stumbled onto a documentary I somehow missed when it came out in 2013. It’s called Comedy Warriors: Healing Through Humor. It’s about five wounded veterans learning how to do stand-up comedy. These are men and women who lost legs, got burned, survived roadside bombs, and have the mindset that they’d rather laugh at it all than be outraged.

One of the warrior-comedians, a man completely messed up from an IED, said something to the effect of, “The best revenge I can get on my enemies is to laugh about it, and to tell my story and make others laugh.” In other words, in a world full of hurt and hate and pain, something the terrorists are bent on causing, his way of counteracting that was to bring joy through telling jokes and making people laugh.

Too soon? Not for him. I mean, let that sink in. This guy who got blown up wants to find the funny in it all. It’s pretty incredible! He and four others trained under a number of greats: Lewis Black, Bob Saget, Zach Galifianakis, B.J. Novak, and more. These aren’t people who tend to sugarcoat their feedback (though they did seem a tad extra kind in this documentary).

I mean, you don’t really get coached by Lewis Black unless you’re prepared to be both insulted and inspired in the same sentence. He specializes in that. But these veterans didn’t flinch. They wrote jokes about their missing limbs, their trauma, their bodies. They took the darkest parts of their lives, went into the deepest parts of pain, and found a way to laugh and make others laugh. To me, it was inspiring and beautiful.

One of them, Bobby Henline, called himself “The Well Done Comedian” because 38% of his body was burned. When he walks up to the mic, he looks around for a few seconds, then says, “You should… see the other guy!” Hilarious! It’s proof that healing doesn’t only or always have to wear a white hospital coat; instead, it sometimes wears a mic and has weird opinions.

I’ve said it many times before on this site and I’ll say it again: laughter is greater than outrage. That’s my comedy motto, after all. Here’s why I say that: outrage has a way of keeping you stuck, of taking you captive, and of never having its hunger satisfied. Laughter, however, gets you moving again. It clears the rubble. It gives oxygen to the soul. It opens you up.

Some people ask me, “Is there anything off limits in comedy?” And the honest answer is: no! But also, again, it depends. It depends on the joke, the delivery, the comedian, the timing, and the audience. It’s a delicate dance. But if someone who’s been blown up in war can find healing in a joke about their own prosthetic leg…maybe the rest of us can lighten up a little and learn to laugh rather than rage.

Many don’t acknowledge this or tend to forget it but, in my view, stand-up is weirdly spiritual. It’s somebody getting on stage saying, “Here’s the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I invite you laugh about it with me so I can breathe again.” After all, that’s what happens when we laugh. We lose our breath, then we breathe again. And we keep repeating the process. As we do, a wall comes crashing down. A wound gets that fresh air it needs. And if we’re lucky, we’re not just laughing, we’re also healing.

Comedy won’t fix everything. It wont’ fix anything, actually. Comedy’s not chemo. It won’t bring back a loved one. Comedy, like time, doesn’t heal. That’s a myth. Only God heals. But he can use time or comedy to bring that healing about. And he does. So, yeah, there’ll always be a joke that’s too soon for someone somewhere. But good comedians don’t tell jokes to be cruel. They tell jokes because sometimes pain makes more sense when it echoes with laughter instead of silence.

So watch Comedy Warriors. Let it punch you in the heart a little. Let it remind you that the human spirit is ridiculously strong and often really, really funny. And the next time life kicks you in the teeth, remember: you can cry about it, yell about it, or grab a mic and make a room full of strangers laugh about it. Then let God do his work of using that to heal.