There are no things by which the troubles and difficulties of this life can be better resisted than with wit and humor. – H. K. Beecher

The important role of humor in our lives has long been accepted. Most of us like to laugh, at least a little bit and at the right times and we’ve learned to live with this phenomenon called humor which inspires much laughter. We allow it fairly easy access to our daily coming and going and often even invite it. But oddly, given its uninterrupted ubiquity in organized human society (indeed, there is sound evidence to suggest that it is equally important in many animal societies), most of us have not really thought much about it. I mean, really wrapped our brains around it. we know it when we feel it but we don’t really know it intellectually, in a reasoned, thoughtful, analytical kind of way. It might sound a bit well, heretical to suggest that humor deserves analysis but perhaps the time is here to do just that. What exactly is this thing called Humor?

Actually, the time came in the 1970’s when a very credible fellow, Norman Cousins, wrote a book titled The Anatomy of an Illness form a Patient’s Perspective. This was a personal account of Cousin’s battle with a debilitating, sometimes fatal disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis. Cousins was the highly credible editor of a respected monthly journal. His “battle” entailed “fighting” and eventually vanquishing the disease by using laughter as his basic weapon. It’s a fascinating tale of one man’s determination to take his destiny into his own hands by taking a fresh look at the role of attitude, especially of a humorous attitude, in good health. It is in large part due to this man and his highly readable book that humor and its usual concomitant laughter became a legitimate subject for scientific study.

Since the publication of that book research into humor and laughter has been ongoing and an impressive literature on the subject continues to develop. Cousins by the way, lived to a ripe age and died of a heart attack as an adjunct professor of medicine at UCLA

The art of medicine lies in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. –

Voltaire.

We know that humor and laughter are not synonymous. Humor is an attitude, a mood, a disposition. One can be in their humor mood and not be laughing, even though one is far more likely to be laughing when in that state. That’s because the humor attitude is one of openness, flexibility, curiosity, receptivity, naivete, child-likeness and all that which allows one to be in much closer touch with the absurdities and incongruities in our lives and that can so inspire laughter in us. We know that laughter, especially deep, genuine belly laughter, the kind that used to make our stomachs hurt when we were kids, has a definite physiological impact. It tightens our muscles, causes us to take in extra volumes of oxygen and very likely results in an increase in certain chemicals in the body such as endorphins and peptides. Interestingly, research has shown that this same reaction occurs whether the laughter is stimulated by an external event, such as a joke or by simply doing it, laughing, as in the case of the Dr. Katarian’s World Laughter Clubs.* Thanks to the humor/laughter research completed and ongoing, we are more convinced than ever that mental and physical attitude are inseparable and this is helping to promote a fresh look at the concept of good health and healing.

The survival of civilization depends to a significant degree upon our capacity for humor. People who laugh together are less inclined to kill one another. – Conrad Lorenz (On Aggression)

Laughing at someone is alienating, destructive and hurtful. It destroys relationships. Laughing with someone is constructive and unifying. It builds relationships .It is no longer a stretch to think that good health, both at the personal and the community level has much to do with the attitude we call humor and a consequent abundance of positive, constructive laughter.

That disposition to flexibility of thought and perspective, that mood which inclines us to take everything, including and most importantly ourselves less seriously, is proving to be a significant factor in total well-being. This is something we all knew of course, but now we know it. Just imagine, try very hard to imagine – imagination is absolutely essential here but imagination and the humor attitude are joined at the hip anyway! – the conflicts, global and local which in essence have as much or more to do with us all taking ourselves much, much too seriously and thereby closing down the humor attitude which allows for the flexibility so necessary to the creative and lasting resolution of conflict. Try to imagine – Go ahead, let the clown in you take over! – the next time a state leader addresses the commonweal he/she is wearing a big, red nose! Then try to imagine a world laughing together. It won’t be hard to do!

Humor is the shortest distance between two people. – Victor Borge Retired professor of Criminal Justice, clown and mediator Bill Waters has a humor consulting business called The Court Jesters. He specializes in workshops on the role of humor in police and corrections work and has trained professionals from the FBI academy to the Czech National Police and the Michigan Department of Corrections.

Reprinted with permission from the Fall 2007 issue of Health & Happiness U.P. Magazine. All rights reserved.