The media often reports tragedies. Perhaps it’s the old newspaper cliché. “If it bleeds, it leads.”  We are fascinated by gory stories – when they happen to other people. Recently, the media reported that a deranged boy killed 15 people including 10 teenagers in a school in Winnenden in southern Germany. All over Germany the flags were flying at half-mast. A jealous husband in Buffalo, NY decapitated his estranged wife.  In Alabama a twenty-eight year-old former police officer went on a killing rampage in the towns of Samson, Kinston and Geneva. He killed ten people. Just read the daily paper; there is much in the news to cry over.  And we haven’t even mentioned the drug wars in Mexico, the fear in Israel, the carnage in Gaza, the suicide bombings in Iraq, or the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Much in the media sickens us.  Why then a column about laughter?

 

The media, of course also reports encouraging news.  Here’s a recent example.  Dr. Gary Turpin in Greenfield, IL is continuing to treat his patients, who lost jobs and health coverage because of the economy, free of charge.  That story is heart-warming and positive.  These upbeat stories, however, don’t make us laugh -- even as they make us feel warm and fuzzy about human nature. 

 

Laughter is something else altogether.  It erupts out of humor, and humor is a surprising shift in perception, a sudden, jarring change that points out the incongruity in the situation. It is the juxtaposition of two very different ideas linked by a punch line, which suddenly makes us aware of the absurdity. Sometimes it’s a pun on words. For example, “Did you hear about the Catholic moth who gave up woolens for lint?” The lint/Lent wordplay jars and amuses us, but humor is not always a pun,  “Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone.” The sudden shift from laughing to snoring, from laughing with others to sleeping lonesome on the couch makes us chuckle.

 

Henry Ward Beecher, the 19th Century abolitionist clergyman preached, "A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs; he is jolted by every pebble in the road."  People with a sense of humor laugh; their ride through life is much smoother. Laughter is good for us.

 
Laughter is good for the body.  Norman Cousins in “Anatomy of an Illness” tells us, “Laughter is inner jogging.”  It’s like exercise. A good belly laugh shakes us up. It improves the blood flow and eases our tensions. It stretches our muscles and relaxes them. It increases our pulse rate.  We breathe more quickly and send more oxygen to our body tissues and organs. It boosts our endorphins; it makes us happier.

 

 “So important is laughter,” the comedian Steve Allen wrote, “that societies highly reward those who make a living by inducing laughter in others." Steve Allen should know; he made truck-fulls of money as a comedian.

 

Laughter, however, improves more than just our bodies.  It is a social phenomenon and helps build community. Laughter is contagious.  It creates a mood and draws people together. Did you ever watch a comedy in an empty movie theater? It’s totally different when the theater is filled.  Our laughter encourages others to laugh; in turn their laughter encourages us.  Laughter is good for our social life. It pulls us in. It makes us feel part of things.

 

Laughter is also beneficial for the soul.  Anne Lamott writes, “Laugher is carbonated holiness.”  It’s the bubbling up of the decency in our hearts. Like a sacrament it is an outward sign of inner goodness. Gently, in the midst of the complexity of life it makes us aware of the Great Mystery.  Genuine laughter reminds us that despite the overwhelming foibles and follies of the human race that all is not lost, that at some level all is well.

 

Dailyword.com reports “on average, children laugh up to 300 times a day while adults laugh only 15 times.”  Perhaps children don’t read the newspapers or watch cable television, but I don’t think that’s the whole explanation.  Children are freer, less inhibited, more open, and more apt to see the wonders and incongruities around them. Jesus had something to say about children. “Truly, I say to you unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  (Mt. 18:3)  Luke tells us that kingdom is already here in the midst of us. (Lk.17: 21) Children are living it now. Their frequent laughter points that out.

 

Their laughter also points to the joy in their hearts. As the French novelist Leon Bloy wrote, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”  Bloy, however, was just reminding us of Saint Paul who said as much in Galatians 5:22. Laughter -- and not only that of children – demonstrates a joy that can lighten up the darkness around us – and cast those violent news items with which this column began in a different light.

 

Pessimism and frowning hurt our bodily and mental health.  They are bad for our social and spiritual life. Laughter, on the other hand, is good therapy for body, mind, psyche and spirit.

 

Laugh and the world laughs with you; frown and body and soul get indigestion.

 

Retired from the Administration at State University of New York at Fredonia, Daniel O’Rourke lives in Cassadaga, NY. His column appears in the Observer, Dunkirk, NY on the second and fourth Thursday each month. A grandfather, Dan is a married Catholic priest. He has published "The Spirit at Your Back," a book of his previous columns. To read about the book or send comments on this column visit his website  http://www.danielcorourke.com/