Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Laughter is the Best Medicine



One thing I often do at the end of my day is cruise around the internet finding funny things to post on Facebook. I started doing it because the things I found made me laugh and I wanted to share them. I started getting comments from people about how much they liked what I was doing and that made me stop and think.

I’ve always loved to make people laugh, in person. And here I was, doing it in cyberspace, too. Why do I like to do that? Because I think laughing is good for you. I feel so much better if I’ve laughed a lot that day. Or even a little. A day without laughter is gloomy.

Norman Cousin agreed with me. When he was ill with a mysterious ailment that he’d picked up in Russia, no one could do anything for him medically. He was given six months to live. So he decided to cure himself. A big part of his cure was watching movies of the funniest comics he knew. And it worked! His mysterious debilitating disease vanished and he lived sixteen more years. He wrote a book about it, Anatomy of an Illness, that I can highly recommend. Proof that laughter can cure you!

In 2011 a study proved that laughter releases endorphins and that social laughter is even better.*

Here are some quotes I love.

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
-Mark Twain

“If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.” 
-Robert Frost

“The earth laughs in flowers.” 
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even if you’re laughing so you don’t cry, keep laughing!



picture from morguefile.com

4 comments:

  1. I think this is why memorial services/celebrations of life often include humorous anecdotes about the deceased. We still love the person, even as we're sad, and if we laugh we can remember the joy of knowing them all that much better.

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  2. Excellent observation. I'm sure you're right.

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  3. You are definitely finding tons of funny things to post. Let there be laughter!

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  4. I'm so glad you like my clowning around. I love to do it!

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