Like my grandfather, I wish to pass away gently in my sleep. Not like the passengers on his bus, who were screaming in terror. Three things happened in your brain in lightning-fast succession if you laughed at that joke. You saw something odd at first: you envisioned my grandfather laying quietly in bed, but then you realized he was driving a bus. Second, you explained the discrepancy: my grandfather was dozing off behind the wheel. Third, you felt amusement because the parahippocampal gyrus part of your brain helped you recognize I wasn’t being serious. And all of it brought you a smidgeon of happiness. A sense of humor is thought to be made up of six basic variables: the cognitive ability to create or understand jokes, an appreciation and enjoyment of jokes, joking and laughing behavior patterns, a cheerful or humorous temperament, a bemused attitude toward life, and a strategy for using humor in the face of adversity, according to researchers. So, having a sense of humor might imply being amusing or loving amusing things. It’s all in the timing when it comes to using comedy to boost happiness. If you’ve ever made a joke about a tragedy and no one laughed, you might have tried to make up for it by saying, “Too soon?” Humor can really help people cope with complaints and loss, according to researchers examining humor in the face of tragedy. The joke, on the other hand, cannot be too near to or too far away from the event. You’ll be shunned if you utter a joke during a terrible natural disaster; tell one about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and most people won’t know what you’re talking about. However, if you get it properly, you may bring a lot of relief.
