Humor can make truth easier to carry without making truth less true.

A joke can deliver something that would be unbearable stated plainly. The humour is not a softening of the truth; it is a container that lets people hold it long enough to hear it. This is why the funniest people are often the ones saying the most serious things.

If there is something hard you need to say or something hard you are carrying, see whether lightness gives it somewhere to go. Not deflection, which avoids the thing. Humour that keeps the truth intact and just makes it possible to look at.