Sounds of Laughter | The Theme of 2025

A reflection of how laughter became a defining part of my year in 2025

Hi hi,

Wishing you a very happy new year !

It is 2026 and the promise I’ve made to myself is to be more creative this year. To not let my head, get in the way of me wanting to write/make/create something.

Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking about laughter a lot. I’ve also been thinking about 2025.

How it went by, what happened, and what didn’t happen. The truth is, I blinked. I blinked and I missed parts of it.

But, when I was present. In the moment. When I was really within myself, and not observing myself doing things on autopilot - I started noticing something every so slightly different from the previous years.

The frequency of laughter in my life had increased. There were more moments of laughter where I was the one laughing. It’s been weighing on my head for a long time, and I guess what better way to start 2026 than write about it.

This was originally meant to be a video essay, but oh well.

Read it, let me know when was the last time you laughed out loud a lot !

---

I.

Starting around the age of 23, many people start experiencing what is called the ‘The Humor Cliff’. It is this idea that as you enter the workforce and grow older, you stop laughing as much as when you were a child. You quite literally laugh less. I think you lose a little bit of the spark that you have when you’re a child.

“We lose our sense of humor. We stop smiling and laughing. So Gallup asked people in 166 countries the simple question, did you smile or laugh yesterday? So for those who are 16, 18, 20, the answer largely is yes. And then around 23, the answer becomes no. And we don’t start laughing again until 70 or 80. Put another way, the average four-year-old laughs 300 times a day. It takes the average 40-year-old two and a half months to laugh that many times. So yes, what we call a global humor cliff. And this was research that was done before the global pandemic.”

- Jennifer Aaker in Hidden Brain: Humor Us

I am on that cliff, and definitely below average even for the adults in terms of laughing. I am the kind of person who doesn’t laugh out loud much. I’ll smirk, give a smile but I’ll rarely have that boisterous loud laughter.

I’ll see the best standup special, and my brain only decides if it’s funny or not. I am not laughing out loud. I am analyzing the setup, and the punchline. If I’m watching one of the best comedy shows, and a good joke lands - I think that’s “brilliant writing”. I’ll deeply admire the memes, and the GIFs and the stickers and I do find them funny.

But that laughter? It isn’t there. There isn’t chuckling, or giggling or a guffaw. There is only a mental analysis of how this situation, or story, or experience was funny or humorous.

My laughter is limited. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, it just happens fewer times in comparison.

I can say that this changed quite a bit in 2025 though.

II.

One of my favourite things to hear is the sound of laughter from friends and family. It brings me tiny doses of delight to hear someone else laugh. I always notice when people laugh, because I know I can’t do it often.

According to the anthropologist Munro Edmonson, the central feature of laughter is aspiration: We release a forceful puff of air as we laugh.

But laughter is also characterized by repetition. In fact, given the extraordinary variability in the sounds people make when they laugh, repetition is what makes laughter universally recognizable. This is why writers conventionalize laughter as “he-he-he,” “ha-ha-ha,” and “ho-ho-ho” (well, at least if you’re Santa Claus).

- Kirsten Bell, The Strange Power of Laughter

The sound levels are distinct, but the experience is common. Some laugh softly. Others have a roaring laughter. Loud and irreverent. Uncontrollable sometimes. Faint even. Laughter is honestly random, but beautiful.

But to be in a room surrounded by laughter. To make someone laugh. To see someone laugh. These are some of the things that keep that tiny spark alive in me.

III.

I have often sent messages to my friends about how it is only when I’m surrounded by them that I am truly able to laugh. Maybe it has got to do with the sense of security I feel around them. That I can be unabashed, and I don’t have to hide behind anything. Perhaps, I feel a lot more free-er. When college got over, and I was working remotely, this would happen so little. I could hear the silence around me. I don’t think I could hear myself laugh that much.

2025 I think was the year where I laughed quite a bit.

I laughed in the face of despair. I laughed in moments of grief. I was giggling at the most inappropriate moments. I was uncontrollable, loud and I’m sure annoying for a few people around me as well.

I laughed. I absolutely did. Maybe not as much as the average person of my age, but more than 2024, and more than 2023, and more than 2022, and definitely more than 2021.

The sounds of laughter around me is the defining theme of 2025 for me.

But what that truly means is that I have made bonds, created a space and grown as a person to be secure enough to feel like I can laugh freely.

I don’t consider myself to be the reason for this small resurgence in laughter.

It is my family and my 1.5 year old niece who taught me to be intentional about laughter again. Hers is the best laughter in the world. To hear my niece laugh is to wash away the harshness of my life.

It is my friends. Old, and new.

Those, who despite experiencing and going through some incredibly tough times, have the resilience to laugh and find delight around them. They laugh at their sadness. They shared that laughter with me.

These are also people who are a shining light. I often say that in the kind of monochromatic life I live, my friends add a lot of color to my life. 2025 has proved that to be truer more than ever.

It is hard to explain this aspect to someone who already laughs normally by default. It isn’t like my life was bad or anything before. I’ve been quite lucky that way. But, this is such a noticeable shift from the past few years. Laughter is becoming a more recurring feature of my life.

For that, I am grateful.

IV.

There is a clip of Stephen Colbert and a Dua Lipa interview that I revisit from time to time (like many other Colber clips).

While discussing Dua Lipa’s podcast ‘At Your Service’, Colbert asks Dua Lipa if she’d like to interview him. Lipa asks Colbert about the relationship between his faith and comedy - whether one wins over the other.

(This is an incredible clip. Watch it in its entirety.)

I think about Colbert’s response often. He didn’t get me converted to Catholicism, but made me respect him even more. Colbert talks about one of his favourite movies “Belfast”, and why he liked it.

“It’s funny about being sad, in the same way that sadness is a little bit of an emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it; because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it.”

“So, if there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens, you are never defeated. You must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other”

I am not that spiritual a person, but I think the core sentiment that finding some way to love and laugh with each other is a way to keep that fear at bay - is something I resonate with quite a bit.

A lot has happened in 2025.

But I could laugh.

Laugh at sadness.

Laugh at the harshness of the year.

Laugh with the warmth of people I care about.

Laugh to keep the child-like spark alive.

I hope the echoes from the laughter of 2025 finds its way into 2026 as well.

---

What were your favourite memories of laughter from 2025? Let me know.

Wishing you a year filled with lots of joy, delight and laughter !

Take care,

Nirmal Bhansali