When Christine Clifford, President, CEO of The Cancer Club and a 18 year Breast cancer survivor. With a simple statement from her son after her surgery. Sparked laughter and a passion for drawing cartoons about her experience. Since her”Twilight Zone Experience” finding humor and feeling better about herself (she also learned humor is a big part of her treatment.)
The next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in that experience. Even though old age is a fact of life. The truth is, we haven’t learned to cope with the thought of aging. Being a part of a youth – obsessed culture, often age should be looked upon as an achievement. Elderly people can be interesting, jovial, lovable, active, wise, witty and holy.
If only we could cast aside the prejudice of our culture and own negative attitude toward casting the aging aside. What I have observed is those that live a fun – filled life of laughter, live longer than those whom don’t. A good belly – filled laugh can help balance the difficult side of the human condition.
Robert W. Corrigan points out: “Comedy tends to be more concerned with the fact despite all our individual defeats, life does continue on its merry way. Consider the common laugh-the human race has been getting a kick out of humor for a very long time. The Bibles notes in Proverb 17:22, ‘A Cheerful heart is good medicine, but a down cast spirit drieth the bones.’
Here in lies a central truth about humor: it is not an idle or random act of our existence; it is an integral part of us, and for a purpose. Only humans truly laugh. Humor and its first cousin comedy are good for our health, physical and emotional. It might be why the soul gravitates toward the life of the party type, everybody seemingly likes a good laugh.
For the vast majority of us, a certain number of ailments a wait us down the road; if they are not already at hand. The poet W.B. Yeats once said, “an old person is like a tattered coat upon a stick, unless he or she responds to aging with clapping and singing. Norman Cousins used humor to heal, in the 1960s he contracted a rare and painful joint disease.
Instead of giving in, however, he went on a human binge, watching old movies, such as the Marx Brothers and the Candid Camera television series. He soon realized, that ten minutes of healing laughter would win him two pain free hours of relief. In a matter of a few months, Cousins regained the motion of his joints, eventually the pain disappeared and he made a complete recovery from his supposed terminal illness.
Within Norman Cousins Book: Anatomy of an Illness, which created a revolution. The cornerstone of his theory of humans is the power of mind and spirit to influence the rest of the body. Feelings are chemicals: they can kill or cure writes Dr. Bernie Siegel. Our emotions are the motor that moves us. Humor is a shortcut to emotional health, if we are able to laugh at ourselves when we are being poked and prodded. The body will pay less attention to the discomfort and begin to heal itself.
The power of humor to transform our heads and hearts as we age is not accidental. It does so… by putting our lives in perspective, life is tantalizing while being mixed with tradegy and comedy; one playing off the other at the same time. Theologian Soren Kierkegaard wrote, ”whenever there is life there is contradiction and wherever there is contradiction the comical is present.”
There is indeed room in old age for fulfillment and contentment, as Angela Macnamara notes: “There is no period in life that doesn’t have its own silver lining and the silver lining doesn’t happen automatically.” But it helps to let our imaginations…. fly to where the sun keeps shining. Also as Fred Astaire put it: ‘Old Age is Like Everything Else, to make a success of it, you got to start young.’ by Michael J. Farrell www.carenotes.com