WTL Issue 024 | May 20, 2026 |
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A Pause, A Laugh, A Bond
Lessons from the Long Haul
A shadow shifted in the dark corner of the downstairs living room. Imperceptible at first. Then it grew, emerging from the recesses of the stairwell, low to the ground. The light caught dark spikey strands rippling with each slouching movement. A flattened snout. Hollow eye slits.
The first cousin to notice would shriek, duck, and scramble upstairs to a parent. The snout advanced on the rest of us, and another set of eyes peeked out from behind it.
For a bunch of kids raised in Alaska, trained to encounter bears, we did it all wrong. We sprinted, even though no human can outrun a bear and the one peeling away from the pack becomes the target. We did the octopus, arms and legs flailing in every direction, neck and trunk wide open. Our small voices climbed to a peak. Then the whole pile of us dissolved into laughter.
By then, my grandpa’s deep belly laugh had given him away. The black bear skin usually draped over the rocking chair covered his head and arms. The very real claws hid his hands.
Grandpa gave gentle hugs, and pipe tobacco lingered on his plaid wool button-down. His humor ran toward the shock variety, the kind that drops you into the joke before you understand what’s happening. In my Athabascan family, humor showed up in other ways too. Nicknames took over so completely that people often forgot the legal names entirely.
What this taught me is that humor brought us cousins together. It built a shared connection among us before we had words for it. Many Alaska Native cultures hold humor among their core values, a quality essential for survival itself. Gentle teasing and jokes shared while laughing together, not at each other, are good for the body and good for the bonds.
Climate work is heavy. The urgency, the crises, and the dangers can crowd out everything else. Laughter makes room. When we collapsed into a pile on the living room floor that day, we weren't only laughing at the prank. We were taking a breath together after the fear, and the breath itself was a kind of bond. I am thinking about how to carry what those cousins taught me into the rooms where climate work happens: the conference room, the funder call, the community meeting running three hours past its end time. The bond often starts to build in a pause, a small laugh, a moment where the room loosens. Creating space for those moments is work any of us can do, and it matters more than it looks like it should.
Field-Tested: Finding Funny in Three Prompts
This is a small practice to help you find the funny. It is perhaps the most serious stuff that can benefit from a moment of levity or the pause that laughing together provides. The first two prompts come from Scott Dikkers’ The Elements of Humor (Bookshop link). The third one I added from a recent observation.
Dikkers writes, “The best humor stems from who you are. It works best when it’s original, spontaneous, and accentuates your personality.” It is simple advice that is hard to act on in professional settings, and harder still in climate work.
Here are three prompts to explore the funny. The first two prompts turn inward. The third turns outward to the room you are in.
1. Recall when others laughed. Dikkers' first prompt: "Remember instances when you did or said things that others perceived as funny."
Look for the small moments, like the aside that made a coworker snort or the accidental wordplay in a meeting. Write a few down. Notice the through-line, and ask yourself what kind of humor is yours.
2. Reframe what feels heaviest. Dikkers' second prompt: "What are the most stressful things in your life? Think of ways you can reframe them with humor."
Make a short list. For each item, look for a way to step beside the stress instead of staying inside it. The reframe might be a wry observation or a turn of phrase. Sometimes nothing comes yet, and you keep sitting with it.
3. Notice the mix of humor and weight. Climate work needs both. Too much levity, and people stop trusting that the work is serious. Too much weight, and people stop being able to carry it. What helps is paying attention when the mix is off, and offering what the room needs, whether that is a small joke or naming what is hard.
These are prompts to sit with and return to over time. Try one this week and see what surfaces.
Signals & Shifts
The article Humor is Serious Business points to research showing that we laugh less the older we get. That seems like a trend worth turning around, especially in mission-driven work. The piece offers practical ways to bring more humor into work that takes itself seriously.
Alex Hallatt’s Arctic Circle comic strip is a hoot. Three immigrant penguins make their way through a changing world, and one of my favorites opens with Frank getting captured in town by the polar bear patrol. Hallatt’s newsletter Illustrated Epistle follows life in England and the adventures of Molly, a jack russell who keeps things lively.
Question for reflection: When did you last laugh with the people you work with, and what was happening in the room just before? I'd love to hear from you.
Take good care of yourself and the work that's yours to do. Both matter more than you know.
Nikoosh
Work That Lasts arrives every other Wednesday. Forward to a colleague who might need these tools, or reply and let me know what's working in your own practice.
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