He promptly scrapped his gloomy doctor, found another to his liking, and undertook his own recovery. Along with self-administering huge doses of vitamin C, he equally injected heavy doses of humor, the belly laugh sort that produces shortness of breath and abdominal muscle ache. He did this by watching every comedy film he could find, and then laying back waiting for the punch lines, the slapstick scenes, and the comedic surprises.<\/p>\n
He claimed 10\u00a0minutes of uninhibited out loud laughing would give him two hours of uninterrupted pain-free sleep. Cousins died in 1990 of heart failure, some 26\u00a0years after his first doctor told him put his affairs in order.<\/p>\n
If humor is life-extending, and even if it isn\u2019t, I\u2019ll take some of it, please. If I\u2019m dying, I\u2019ll watch\u00a0Mouse Hunt<\/a>.<\/em> There is one scene running full minute, maybe better, with no dialog at all that always leaves me gasping. What\u2019s Up, Doc?<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is another. Both are screwball classics.<\/p>\n But since life isn\u2019t a movie, I also look for glimpses of humor in\u00a0<\/strong>ordinary\u00a0<\/strong>life<\/strong>, just the everyday encounters with both friends and with strangers\u2015especially strangers\u2015that take a comical, sometimes hilarious turn. These are true incidents I\u2019ve stumbled into.<\/span><\/p>\n * I went to Ace Hardware and found a clerk in the plumbing isle. That never happens, a real clerk at hand, but there she was. That too was unusual, a woman plumber. Holding up a broken something-or-other that she might see it, \u201cIt\u2019s a hard life,\u201d\u00a0 I told her. \u201cYeah,\u201d she replied, \u201cand then you go into plumbing and it sucks what\u2019s left right out of you.\u201d<\/p>\n * The church was at the crest of a long, steep hill. Roger was driving the snow-covered street\u00a0up<\/em>\u00a0the hill to worship. His car lost traction, rotated 180-degrees so he was now pointed\u00a0down<\/em> the hill back toward home. His explanation for skipping worship that Sunday: \u201cIt seemed to me God wanted me back home, so that\u2019s the way I went.\u201d<\/p>\n * Visiting a friend in New York I remarked on his dog drinking from the toilet. \u201cLook at it from her perspective,\u201d he told me. \u201cShe might wonder why you\u2019re peeing in her water bowl.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n * Sometimes the humor isn\u2019t a punch line, but a lesson. I\u2019m talking with this guy who I take for a Russian. He looks Slavic and talks like it. \u201cEverybody says that but I\u2019m Mexican; now I\u2019m American. And, you want to know what I do for a living?\u201d Sure. \u201cI\u2019m an executive chef; I learned all of it in America.\u201d He started out in the back of a restaurant and worked<\/span> himself forward. \u201cThis is the real American part: I run an <\/span>Indian<\/em> restaurant. A Russian-looking Mexican cooking Indian food for suburbanites in Kansas City, that\u2019s America.\u201d Then he quotes the punch line: \u201cIs this is a great country or what?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n * One from the Bible. Doing some idle reading I found a dry, sardonic bit of editorial snark at 2 Chronicles (21:20) summarizing the reign of King Jehoram, who \u201cdied, let it be said, <\/span>to no one\u2019s regret. <\/em>He and was buried in the City of David, but\u00a0<\/span>not<\/em>\u201d\u2015 in case anyone was wondering about it\u2015\u201cin the tombs of the kings.\u201d (Emphasis added)<\/span><\/p>\n And should you ever feel especially dispirited, there was Phillip, all gushy, telling Nathaniel, we\u2019ve found the messiah. It is \u201cJesus, son of Joseph, of Nazareth.\u201d Nathaniel replied drolly, \u201cCan anything good come out of Nazareth?\u201d If you are keeping up with\u00a0The Chosen<\/em>, you\u2019ll know line is used as a running joke.<\/span><\/p>\n If ever there was a way of adding an amendment to the seven-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit<\/strong> making them eight, I\u2019d vote to include humor. Of course the gifts of the Spirit are specifically imparted at Baptism while humor, on the other hand, seems to be generic to our species, so maybe it doesn\u2019t need to be called out specifically. But if humor isn\u2019t precisely a divine gift granted to all humanity, then I suggest it is close.<\/p>\n Does God have a sense of humor, cracking cosmic jokes on the pleasures and the absurdities of life? I doubt it. Not as we humans practice the funny stuff anyway. Still, at the very least, there are hints God can be playful. Remember that great Leviathan creature, Psalm 104:26, that great beast God \u201cmade for the sport of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe God doesn\u2019t laugh out loud (or at us), but He seems to know delight well enough.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A former Lutheran pastor, Russell E. Saltzman<\/em> lives in Kansas City, Missouri. His latest book is <\/em>Speaking of the Dead<\/a>.<\/u><\/em> He can be reached at\u00a0russell.e.saltzman@gmail.com<\/a><\/em> and on Twitter<\/em> @RESaltzman<\/a>.\u00a0This piece is slightly revised from a previous version pubished elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n Photo Credit: Dream Works<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The case of Norman Cousins\u00a0has always fascinated me. Long editor of the (alas) defunct\u00a0Saturday Review, in 1965 Cousins was told he had but a few months to live due to an especially virulent variety of arthritis,\u00a0ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative disease causing the breakdown of collagen. He promptly scrapped his gloomy doctor, found another to his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3985,"featured_media":1950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[456],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-humor"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1156\/2022\/03\/mouse-hunt.jpg\")
<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>I\u2019m impressed, I tell him and I am. <\/span><\/p>\n