The importance of laughter

Do you know how important laughter is to your life and mine?

In the book The Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient, Norman Cousins tells of being hospitalized with a rare, crippling disease.

When he was diagnosed as incurable, he checked out of the hospital. Aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the body, Cousins reasoned the reverse was true. He borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment: Marx Brothers films and “Candid Camera” reruns. It didn’t take him long to discover that 10 minutes of laughter provided two hours of pain-free sleep. Amazingly, his debilitating disease was eventually reversed.

After the account of his victory appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cousins received more than 3,000 letters from appreciative physicians throughout the world.1 

Humor is one of God’s most marvelous gifts. According to one Chinese proverb, “each laugh makes you 10 years younger.” And Barbara Johnson says, “Laughter is to life what shock absorbers are to automobiles. It won’t take the potholes out of the road, but, it sure makes the ride smoother.”

Humor gives us smiles, laughter and gaiety. Humor reveals the roses and hides the thorns. Humor makes our heavy burdens light and smoothes out the kinks along the road.

Humor gives us the capacity to clarify the obscure, to simplify the complex, to deflate the pompous, to chastise the arrogant, to point a moral, and to adorn a tale.

But we seem to forget the benefits of having a good sense of humor as grow older. A child is said to laugh a total of 400 times a day, while an adult laughs an average of just 15 times each day.

We spend a fortune on seminars, books and tapes on stress management, forgetting that laughter is an instant vacation which is good for the body and the soul. Famous author and speaker Denis Waitley’s observation proves the power of humor. He observed that many individuals who have lived to 80 years or more possess a great sense of humor. “Humor prevents the “hardening of the attitudes,” writer Joel Goodman says. And Ellie Katz warns, “Humor may be hazardous to your illness.”

I myself have to confess that there are two things in life that help maintain my sanity: prayer and laughter. And with the challenges of the 21st century, I seriously question the ability of human beings to endure life without both. Even creativity consultant Roger Non Oech says, “There is a close relationship between the ‘Ha-ha’ of humor and the ‘Aha!’ of discovery.

They say I’m an inspirational and motivational speaker. But really, I just make people laugh with stories and anecdotes that deliver lessons. The people get inspired because they laugh. And they laugh at my stories because they can see themselves in it. Which is good. Habib Bourguiba notes, “Happy is the person who can laugh at himself. He will never cease to be amused.”

But I like best what the Bible says in Proverbs 17:22: “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”

Don’t be too serious with life. No one has come out of it alive anyway.

So pray tell me now: are you healthy, and how are your bones?

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1Today in the Word, Moody Bible Institute, 12-18-91