I think everyone is born with humor, but your life can beat it

The words “I think everyone is born with humor, but your life can beat it out of you, sadly, or you can be lucky enough to grow up in it” by Catherine O’Hara shine with the tender light of truth — a truth both sorrowful and beautiful. They speak of humor not as a talent, but as a birthright — a flame placed within every soul at the dawn of life. To O’Hara, humor is the first laughter of a child, the pure joy of being alive before the world teaches us to be afraid. Yet as she warns, life itself — with its wounds, losses, and burdens — can beat that humor out of us, until what once was light becomes shadow, and what once was laughter becomes silence.

In her wisdom, O’Hara reminds us that humor is the language of resilience. To be born with it is natural; to keep it alive is an act of courage. Every child laughs easily, not because life is perfect, but because they have not yet learned to hide their joy. But as the years unfold, we face rejection, failure, grief — and slowly, the laughter fades. Society teaches us to be serious, to measure worth in success rather than joy, to hide behind masks of dignity. In that pursuit, we forget that humor is not foolishness — it is freedom. It is the soul’s rebellion against despair.

History is filled with those who, though battered by life, never let go of that inner spark. Consider Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, who wrote that “humor, more than anything, is the soul’s weapon in the fight for self-preservation.” Surrounded by death and cruelty, Frankl still found moments to smile, to joke with fellow prisoners, to remind them that their spirits were unbroken. His laughter was not denial — it was defiance. It said: “You may take everything from me, but not my ability to see light.” Like Catherine O’Hara, he understood that humor is a form of grace, one that cannot be taught but must be guarded fiercely against the cruelty of life.

“Or you can be lucky enough to grow up in it.” These words carry the fragrance of gratitude — for O’Hara, whose childhood was filled with laughter, understood that humor can be a shelter as well as a seed. When one is raised among those who find joy in imperfection, who laugh kindly at life’s absurdities, that laughter becomes armor and inheritance. A family that teaches humor teaches survival. It teaches that failure can be funny, that mistakes can be teachers, that love and laughter often spring from the same well. Such people do not escape pain, but they learn to meet it with a smile instead of surrender.

The ancients, too, revered the spirit of laughter. The Greeks saw Euphrosyne, one of the Three Graces, as the goddess of joy and mirth — proof that laughter itself was divine. They believed that the gods favored those who could find delight even in hardship, for such souls were closest to immortality. The Stoics, too, though known for their discipline, often spoke of humor as a mark of wisdom. To laugh at oneself, they said, is to rise above the illusion of control. It is to see the vast comedy of existence and still choose love over cynicism.

But there is warning in O’Hara’s words — a quiet sorrow. She says, “life can beat it out of you.” This is no mere metaphor. It is the truth of many who have forgotten how to laugh — who have been crushed by the weight of disappointment, responsibility, or loss. When that happens, humor becomes a memory, and life grows heavy. Yet even then, O’Hara offers hope. For though humor may be beaten down, it is never truly destroyed. Like a spring buried under earth, it waits to be uncovered — by friendship, by forgiveness, by the courage to find absurdity in one’s own struggles again.

And so, beloved listener, take this teaching to heart: protect your humor as you would protect your soul. Laugh often, even when life tries to silence you. Seek out those who make you laugh — not because they distract you from pain, but because they remind you that you are more than your suffering. Let humor be your mirror and your medicine. For as Catherine O’Hara shows us, the difference between those broken by life and those transformed by it lies not in what they endure, but in whether they can still laugh — not mockingly, but lovingly, at the beautiful, tragic, miraculous mess of being human.