Did Adulthood Kill Our Laughter?

By: Rachel Merrill

Before we even knew the word happy, we knew how to laugh.

Before we could explain what was funny, tell a joke, or understand why we couldn’t contain our excitement when someone played peek-a-boo, our bodies already knew what to do.

We laughed.

Researchers have observed laughter in babies as early as three to four months old. Recognizable first words usually don’t begin until closer to a year. In other words, we learn how to laugh long before we learn how to explain what we are feeling.

I think that’s pretty remarkable.

We don’t enter the world waiting for someone to teach us how to experience joy. We recognize connection, surprise, play, and delight before we have the vocabulary to describe any of them.

Laughter is one of our earliest ways of saying, I see you. I feel safe with you. And whatever ridiculous thing you just did, please do it again.

It’s also much more social than we tend to realize. We are significantly more likely to laugh with other people than we are when we’re alone, and much of what makes us laugh during an ordinary conversation wouldn’t qualify as an actual joke. Laughter is tied to affection, agreement, bonding, and our ability to regulate emotion together.

So, if laughter comes so naturally to us, and if it shows up before speech and is woven into the fabric of human connection, what happens between infancy and adulthood that makes so many of us become too serious?

Joy Became Something We Earn

You may have heard the statistic that children laugh 300 times a day while adults laugh only 17.

It makes for a fantastic inspirational graphic, but the research behind those exact numbers is nearly impossible to substantiate. What research does show is that adults vary tremendously in how often they laugh. Some laugh dozens of times throughout the day. Others may not laugh at all.

That makes me wonder less about how many times we’re supposed to laugh and more about what happens in life where laughter begins to disappear.

We don’t simply grow out of it. We just get very good at being “appropriate”.

As children, we laugh because something delights us. But as adults, we read the room first. We consider where we are, who is watching, how loudly we’re reacting, and whether laughing might make us appear less intelligent, less mature, or less capable.

Essentially, we learn to monitor ourselves.

We also tend to become busier the older we get. Play is no longer something that happens naturally in the middle of the day. It just becomes another thing we’re supposed to schedule between work, errands, appointments, household responsibilities, and moving the same load of laundry from the washer to the dryer after forgetting it was there.

There is always something more “responsible” we could be doing.

Over time, enjoyment slowly becomes a reward.

We can relax after the work is finished (rise and grind, anyone?).

We can laugh after the stressful season has passed, the problem has been solved, and everyone who depends on us appears to be reasonably stable.

Unfortunately, most of us are never going to reach a point where absolutely everything is handled. Life just doesn’t work that way. There will always be another email, another decision, another responsibility, or another person who needs something from us.

If joy has to wait until we finish everything, we may end up postponing it for most of our lives.

We Learned To Keep Ourselves In Check

I don’t think adulthood eliminates our ability to laugh. Instead, I think many of us have built lives that leave very little room for the version of ourselves who does.

We become focused on being productive, capable, dependable, and taken seriously. Now: those aren’t bad qualities at all. They’re essential for us to have created the lives we have now.

But when those qualities become the only parts of ourselves we allow other people to see, life starts to feel very narrow and limited.

At some point while growing up, we learned that seriousness was proof that we were responsible adults. Then hustle culture came along and gave us another way to measure our worth: how busy we were. Eventually, exhaustion became such a normal part of success that many of us stopped questioning why it was there.

We didn’t necessarily choose this all at once. More often, it happened through a series of small decisions.

Maybe we stopped doing things we weren’t good at because looking foolish felt uncomfortable. Perhaps we lost touch with people who brought out our weirdest, most unguarded selves. We may have become more careful about what we said and how we said it, or slowly started treating silliness like something childish instead of something human.

It looks different for everyone, but the result can be remarkably similar: we become so practiced at holding ourselves together that we forget how it feels to let go.

That doesn’t mean we lost that part of ourselves.

But it may mean we haven’t given that part much room to breathe.

This happens in workplaces, too. We build environments where everyone feels the need to perform at their peak at all times, and then we wonder why people seem disconnected or exhausted. A team that never feels comfortable enough to laugh together is still telling us something, regardless of what the latest employee-engagement survey says.

That doesn’t mean every meeting needs to become an improv exercise or that leaders should start adding “mandatory fun” to the calendar. Please don’t.

It simply means people are more likely to let their guard down when they feel safe.

And laughter usually requires us to let our guard down, at least for a little while.

Laughter Doesn’t Mean Nothing Matters

Sometimes as adults we can confuse taking something seriously with behaving seriously at all times.

But, some of the people I trust most are the ones who can sit with the full weight of a difficult situation and still find the absurdity hiding somewhere inside it.

Their laughter doesn’t dismiss what’s happening, and it doesn’t make the problem less real. It just reminds everyone that the problem has not consumed everything.

We already know laughter can exist alongside difficult things because we experience it all the time.

We laugh at funerals when someone tells the embarrassing story the person would have wanted to have told. We laugh during an argument when we suddenly hear how ridiculous we both sound. We also laugh when everything is going wrong, because if we don’t laugh, then we just cry.

Sometimes laughter does come from happiness.

But other times it comes from discomfort, disbelief, exhaustion, connection, or the realization that being a human being is complicated and confusing.

Research suggests that laughter may even soften the relationship between stressful events and the stress symptoms that follow them. That doesn’t mean laughter fixes burnout, erases grief, or transforms an unhealthy environment. A few jokes doesn’t make the hard thing less real.

But laughter can interrupt the heaviness.

It reminds us that this moment is not the only moment we will ever have. It gives us a little space to breathe before we deal with whatever comes next.

Laughter doesn’t make life easier. Sometimes it simply reminds us that, even in the middle of everything, this life is still ours.

If You’re Not Laughing Much Anymore

I don’t think the answer is to add “laugh more” to an already unbearable self-care checklist.

That would be its own special kind of nonsense.

Besides, we’ve seen “laugh more, worry less” plastered across enough decorative stuff in stores, and it hasn’t helped us so far.

If you aren’t laughing much anymore, instead of asking, How can I make myself laugh? maybe ask what has made your life feel so serious.

Who are the people you don't have to rehearse your reactions around? When was the last time you did something purely because it sounded fun, not because it was productive, impressive, good for your health, or useful in some way? What parts of yourself have you dimmed because they no longer fit the image of who you think you’re supposed to be?

And maybe the hardest question:

Do you like who you have had to become to maintain the life you’ve built?

That question is really at the heart of Becoming Bolder.

Becoming bolder isn’t about creating a newer, shinier, more optimized version of yourself. Most of us are already exhausted from trying to keep up with the version we think we should be.

It is about paying attention to the parts of yourself that have become quieted over time.

The playful part. The curious part. The part that wants to try something without needing to be good at it. The part that can laugh loudly, change its mind, take up space, and enjoy something without first proving that it deserves to.

Sometimes growth means building something new.

And sometimes it means going back for something you had all along.

Laugh Before Everything Is Finished

So yes, laugh more.

Not everything needs to be solved before you’re allowed to enjoy your life. Silly does not equal incapable.

Watch the stupid video. Spend time with the person who makes you laugh until you can’t breathe. Tell the same story you’ve told a hundred times because it still gets you every single time. Do something you’re terrible at and resist the urge to give up before you’ve seen it through.

Be ridiculous every once in a while.

There will always be something waiting for your attention. Another responsibility, another problem, another perfectly reasonable excuse to postpone joy until life becomes less complicated.

But life doesn’t become less complicated before it starts passing us by.

We laughed before we had the words to explain why. We don’t need to intellectualize our way back to it. We just need to make a little more room for the people, places, and moments that remind us how.

Laugh more. Enjoy more.

None of us are getting out of this alive, so we might as well stop taking life too seriously.

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When You're Ready

Reading about creating more harmony in your life is one thing.

Giving yourself permission to change the arrangement is another.

We tend to think boldness should be obvious: taking the risk, making the move, launching something new, or finally doing the thing everyone else is too afraid to do.

Sometimes it looks like that.

But sometimes, becoming bolder is much quieter.

It’s admitting that a life you worked very hard to build no longer feels good to live in. It’s questioning a definition of success you inherited before you were old enough to decide whether you actually wanted it. It’s resting before you have completely exhausted yourself, changing direction without presenting a twenty-slide defense of your decision, or giving more attention to the part of your life that needs you, even when that makes everything else look temporarily uneven.

That kind of boldness may not look particularly impressive from the outside.

But it can change the entire composition of your life.

That is why we created Becoming Bolder.

Becoming Bolder is for people who know they are ready for something different, even if they can’t fully explain what “different” looks like yet. It’s a space to examine the life you’ve built, reconsider the expectations you’ve been carrying, and make more intentional choices about your health, your work, your relationships, and whatever comes next.

Not because your life needs to be completely reinvented.

And certainly not because you need another person telling you how to optimize every waking hour of your day.

Sometimes the first step is simply becoming honest about what is no longer working, and be brave enough to imagine what might work better.

You don’t have to balance every part of your life perfectly.

You get to create a life that sounds like you.

And when you’re ready to change the arrangement, we’re here to help you become a little bolder.

Ready to start your conversation? Email us at [email protected]