He who laughs!

How good it is to meet up with friends and to sit in the evening sun and enjoy a glass of wine together. To share pictures of family and see how they have moved on since the last meeting. I had this pleasure the other night there. Sometimes the laughter was at my expense sometimes at one of the others in the company. It is amazing how having grandchildren change the importance of the quality of the wifi on a site. I never thought I would see the day my friend went to the office to complain about such a matter. it certainly made me smile.

Laughter improves any gathering and experts even say it aids digestion.  This is possibly why there is the tale of the monks who had taken a vow of silence were allowed to relax the rules at meal times.  They were still not permitted to say much but they shared jokes by saying out the number of the joke. This usually resulted in some laughter. One monk seemed never to get any laughter response. Eventually, he broke the rule and asked why nobody laughed when he told a joke. he was told, "There is nothing wrong with the joke it is the way you tell it."  

While the average child laughs one hundred and fifty times a day, say, researchers, the average adult laughs only fifteen times. It seems as we grow older the ability to laugh decreases. I know that sadly I am one who falls into this category, but inside I have many a laugh.

There is a true account of a man named Norman Cousins, it tells of him being hospitalised with a rare, crippling disease. 

When he was diagnosed as incurable, Cousins checked out of the hospital. Aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the body, he reasoned the reverse was true. So he borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment, consisting of Marx Brothers films and old "Candid Camera" reruns, ( neither of which would have made me laugh). 

It didn't take long for him to discover that 10 minutes of laughter provided two hours of pain-free sleep. Amazingly, his debilitating disease was eventually reversed. After the account of his victory appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cousins received more than 3000 letters from appreciative physicians throughout the world.

So it seems that one of the best recipes for happiness and a good life is at least ten minutes minimum of laughter per day.

It is also worth remembering, "Happy is the person who can laugh at himself. He will never cease to be amused." This, of course, would also be appropriate to herself.

Have a wonderful laughter filled day.