Sunday, September 29, 2013

Laugh Until it Hurts

I don't know a better medicine for any of us than a good laugh. I remember that Norman Cousins who was Editor of the then sophisticated, Saturday Review. He contacted a very serious illness and the doctors told him he did not have long to live. So he decided that he was going to prove the doctors wrong. After a brief stint in the hospital he checked himself into a hotel room. He said it was cheaper than the hospital (and this was years ago) and you could get some sleep at night. He heard somewhere that laughter was good for the soul and so he decided to make laughter part of his daily regimen. He got his wife to locate a whole cadre of the old Candid Camera re-runs that were on television. He would watch these for a while every day and just laugh and laugh. Cousins did not beat the serious disease he had--but he lived several years after the doctors said he would die. He told his story in a great book, Anatomy of an Illness. 

I've been co-teaching a class on aging with my Pastor the last few weeks. And he introduced me to Mary Maxwell.  Mary is this absolutely hilarious older lady. We showed clips from her YouTube segments to our class. I recommend them to anybody who needs a laugh which is, I guess just about all of us. Pull up YouTube and type in Mary Maxwell and--tah-day--there you are. And--happy laughing.

                                          by Roger Lovette:  lrl1035@bellsouth.net

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