Someday We'll Laugh About This Week – January 2-8, 2025

History of Someday We'll Laugh About This Week

It’s a funny mystery who created this week-long celebration, but it indeed falls at the right time to bring much-needed laughter into everyone’s lives. People often make choices they regret, only to later laugh about it, or they do something embarrassing but are too flushed to see the humor in the moment. It’s never wrong to laugh at ourselves; it only helps us accept ourselves the way we are because if we don’t, we can’t expect other people. Someday We’ll Laugh About This Week encourages people to put their past worries in the past by laughing at them and moving on. The very fact that this celebration falls in the first week of a new year is a sign that “in with the new and out with the old,” with a laugh.

Laughter is often spontaneous and triggered by conversations or events. It exists in humans from the first few months of life, even in deaf or blind babies. Laughter transcends both socio-cultural and species divides since it has been observed in other great apes. The evolution of laughter can be traced back to about 10 to 16 million years ago.

Laughter has so many health benefits that have been proven by science. In 1964, author Norman Cousins developed a treatment for his ankylosing spondylitis and collagen disease, which included large doses of Vitamin C and laughter induced by comedy films. Sigmund Freud has also theorized that laughter releases tension and “psychic energy.” Even academic works have used humor and laughter as their topics. A notable contribution to this is Henri Bergson’s twentieth-century “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.”
With laughter playing such an important role in our lives, it is equally important to celebrate a week of laughing at ourselves and letting loose. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.