WHY SO SERIOUS?

What?  Did you think when you opened this up you were going to get some crazy scary Health Ledger meme as the Joker?  Sorry Batman fan....not today!

I was driving to work today listening to sports radio and the guest that was on, although a College Basketball Analyst, was dropping line after line that was HILARIOUS!  

It made me think about how much I enjoy LAUGHTER and really, how it makes me feel to laugh.

Proverbs 17:22, in the Bible says, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength."  Notice, it's better to laugh and and be light hearted (it's GOOD MEDICINE), but if you do the opposite, it drains you or saps strength from you.

Think about it:  how do you feel coming out of a great comedy movie where you are laughing the whole time?  How about coming out of a depressing movie...how do you feel then?  I like a good thriller or mind bender movie, but if the Cheerleader and I hit up RedBox on the weekend, we make sure that we get at least one comedy.   Why?  Because we don't want to walk away from the experience in down, sad, scared, or drained mood.  

The late author, Norman Cousins, talked about the healing power of laughter in his classic book, "Anatomy of an Illness".  One report from Laughter Online University (LOU) about his illness said this:

"In 1964 following a very stressful trip to Russia, he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (a degenerative disease causing the breakdown of collagen), which left him in almost constant pain and motivated his doctor to say he would die within a few months. He disagreed and reasoned that if stress had somehow contributed to his illness (he was not sick before the trip to Russia), then positive emotions should help him feel better. With his doctors’ consent, he checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel across the street and began taking extremely high doses of vitamin C while exposing himself to a continuous stream of humorous films and similar “laughing matter”. He later claimed that 10 minutes of belly rippling laughter would give him two hours of pain-free sleep, when nothing else, not even morphine could help him.

His condition steadily improved and he slowly regained the use of his limbs. Within six months he was back on his feet, and within two years he was able to return to his full-time job at the Saturday Review. His story baffled the scientific community and inspired a number of research projects."

I like when it said, "...if stress had somehow contributed to his illness...then positive emotions should help him feel better."  

Stress less.  LAUGH MORE!

Make laughing and laughter a regular part of your BEST YEAR YET...and "LIGHTEN UP FRANCIS!"

My 3 things I'm GRATEFUL for today:

• Transportation
• Laughter
• My Bible