Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Proverbs 17:22 (05/04/23)
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TITLE: A Belly Laugh With a Difference | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
05/10/23 -
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What do you call an angry carrot? Steamed. Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns don’t work. I ordered a chicken and an egg on-line. I’ll let you know which comes first. Where was King David’s temple located? Behind his ear. What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck. Why do seagulls fly over the sea? If they flew over the bay they would be called bagels. What do you call a sad cup of coffee? Depresso.
How much responsibility does a patient have for his or her own wellness? Proverbs seems to land a big chunk of it on us. Is there a greater link between psychological emotions and physiological symptoms than we realize? For eons and generations, we ignored this as trust and responsibility was transferred to the realm of science and medicine.
The wisest of the wise studied life from top to bottom and from start to finish. One of his conclusions. “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
It took a hospital stay to discover a powerful drug others brushed over. A healing tonic heralded in the Proverbs thousands of years ago. Severe pain, high fevers and a creeping paralysis of his legs, neck and back pinned Norman Cousins to the bed. Not being able to move his body was a clear clue that something was seriously wrong. The degenerative collagen illness was a severe and life-threatening disease of the connective tissue.
The editor of the Saturday Review instructed the nurses to read him humor columns and to show him reruns of Candid Camera and the Marx Brothers. In a six-page article he wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine, (Anatomy of an Illness) Cousins stated that “I made a joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.”
Five thousand letters were written in response and this prompted Cousins to write two books including one called The Healing Heart to describe the partnership patient and doctor have in the recovery process after a heart attack. He joined the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine as a researcher in the area of emotions.
Skeptics are plentiful in pointing out that Cousins seems to advocate that laughter is all it takes. Some think of this as anti-scientific and irrational. Little evidence exists to instruct us that a belly laugh is enough to cure cancer. Cousins believed that doctors still had to do their due diligence and apply their knowledge but he also believed patients had to do their part in self-care.
"What we really mean by a patient's responsibility,” he claimed, “is that we've got vast powers that are rarely used. It's important to avoid defeatism and a sense of panic and despair. But that's not an excuse for not seeking medical help." He was rational enough to deny that holistic health should include things like palmistry and astrology and other fringe elements.
Cousins made pranks on April 1st an art form. He chose hope over despair on a daily basis. He played golf and tennis twenty years after his illness. He saw boredom as the real dangerous disease. Still, there is more to life than belly laughs.
If Solomon also penned Ecclesiastes, we read there that “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…a time to weep and a time to laugh” (NIV). Our Puritan forefathers would have been horrified at the conclusions Cousins arrived at or at the business humor has become. Yet, of all creation, man alone seems to laugh in imitation of the Creator who also laughs (Psalm 2:4; 59:8). If humor is a gift then one day we will give an account of our stewardship of it.
There is nothing like a baby to make us smile and laugh. When Abraham named his son Isaac the name meant laughter. Sarah said “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me” ( Genesis 21:6). The seed of Abraham, Jesus, seems to have been filled with his own brand of laughter and wordplay to spark joy and the abundant life for his followers. The giver of wisdom inspired the truth of Scripture and so we take our need for laughter seriously.
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