Skip to main content

laughter the best medicine

 

Laughter the best medicine



When I was growing up the Readers Digest was still popular and I used to enjoy reading the humour section called ‘Laughter, the best medicine’.    Ina and I have just watched the 1998 film Patch Adams based on the true story of a doctor in the US who believes that humour and play are essential to physical and emotional health.  He is described as a physician, comedian, social activist, clown and author, not words you would always see together.  Robin Williams as you can imagine gives the film a lot of life and energy and inspires patients and staff alike.  

There comes a point though after a tragic event when he decides to pack it all in, to give up on his vision for a form of holistic medicine that uses humour and play in appropriate ways.   His trust in humanity is broken for a while and he loses his way.  Thankfully he finds it again and realises that light can never be quenched, even if it feels that the darkness is winning at times.  The most powerful line in the film for me is when is before a medical board and he says indifference is one of the most deadly diseases of all.

These last few months have been strange and we still live in tense times, not only with covid and an uncertain economic future, but also with increased polarisations in certain parts of the world.   It is easy for us to become indifferent to others when there seem a never ending number of problems facing our world.   The temptation is to retrench, keep our heads down and weather out the storm.

Lightness and humour still remain important parts of our lives however.   They speak to the hope within us, the goodness in others, and stop us from being too serious in the wrong way.    Being able to laugh and joke and play are not frivolous, but life giving and energising especially in such times as these.   We should never be too old or grown up or respectable to celebrate the absurdity and quirkiness of human behaviour, especially our own. Being able to laugh at ourselves is a wonderful thing and makes us great company to be with.  Humour, self-deprecating or otherwise, gives us permission to be ourselves, secure in who we are with all our foibles.   The last thing we need are too many stuffed shirts!

The picture shared with this is called the Laughing Christ.  You can really feel the belly laugh, the real joy erupting in a spontaneous guffaw.  It’s magnetic.  Jesus was known to enjoy a good party and less than respectable company.   The humour and irony of some his parables and interchanges are lost in translation and cultural distance, but his original hearers would have picked it up.   He was popular with ordinary people not because he was pious but with his compassion and desire to heal there came a lightness and a joy which were infectious.

When did you last have a good laugh?   Did you hear the one about the….  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Curiosity in Lent

  Lent starts on Wednesday and I've decided this year to cultivate  curiosity. I'm not sure where this will lead me but it came off the back of a school assembly I led yesterday for 200 17 year olds.  I was referencing Jesus' famous saying ' you will know the truth and the truth will set you free'. ( John 8:32). Amidst all the revising for exams and the importance of learning facts and answers I was hoping to inspire them with the sense of wonder they had as children and the curiosity that led them to ask questions.   Good questions sometimes are even more important than good answers. After a day today walking with Ina in the Trossachs and hanging out in our van afterwards reading and chatting and snoozing  I  felt the challenge of my own words the previous morning.    Lent is so often seen as a period of contraction, a narrowing of appetites, restricting of habits, scrutiny of motivations etc.  It is hard to get excited about Lent the w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Re-enchantment

  The magical wonder of snow can be lost by a couple of degrees warming turning the white falling flakes into dismal rain.    It is precisely the same elements of moisture and air, humidity and wind, yet the shifting of the one variant of temperature creates a totally different outcome.  I have only managed three snow days in the mountains this winter, due to a combination of mostly busy diaries and a very unpredictable weather which meant days set aside for a climb would sometimes be literally a washout.  Ina and I did have a good summitting of the Cobbler with the spikes on our boots giving us the grip we needed in the the last snow of the season, and I felt again the sheer wonder of walking in crisp, hard snow as the world fell away around us. It looks like it's gone for the year now though and we have to wait 9 months probably to get out onto the white stuff again.  The hills just look wet and sodden now and most uninspiring... and yet...they are exactl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lambing Snows and Holy Week

  (photo courtesy of Abi Bull, Isle of Skye) Lambing snow is the name given to an early spring snowfall that can catch some of the wee lambs out who are born at the start of the season.   Farmers have to watch out for this and, given care and shelter, the lambs are usually able to survive.   It coincides too with the images of daffodils emerging through a covering of late snow,   a similar sign of hope and new life in a forbidding and even hostile environment. Nevertheless there is something beautiful of this setting of fragile life against the rawness of nature, something that speaks to the heart of the human condition and the poignancy of it all.   I write this on a Good Friday which is set in a global context of much uncertainty and even fear and desperation.    The centuries old story that we are taken back to again and again by the turning of the season, of a God who died for a suffering and broken world, seems to have more resonance than ever. ...
Post a Comment
Read more