Laughter The Best Medicine

Of all the tools in our survival kit, a sense of humour can, arguably, be the most valuable.

Stress is a killer. Not only does it rob us of the joy of life but it can significantly reduce our life expectancy. Controlled stress can be beneficial, beefing up our awareness and sharpening our reactions. The fight or flight reaction is never far from the surface. And that keeps us on our game. But uncontrolled stress is nothing less than debilitating, reducing our existence to little more than a daily struggle.

A good laugh can break the tension. A nurtured sense of the ridiculous can be the circuit-breaker that gives us the opportunity to step back from the big and threatening picture and take time to replenish and nourish our coping mechanisms.

There are a great many things that we encounter each and every day that should be taken seriously. Likewise there are a good many things we encounter each and every day that should be treated as trivial – and deservingly so. Things outside our control…beyond our influence…not worth our self-inflicted pain.

The danger in magnifying the trivial is that we weaken our capacity to cope with the major. And yet we all have the tendency to sweat the small stuff.

In the same way that we should be looking for the gold hidden by the dross of everyday life (and it’s always there if we care to look), we should also be looking for the humour in any given situation.

That doesn’t mean a descent into the disrespectful or the abandonment of common courtesies. It means being amused as much as it means being bemused. It means seeing humour for what it is and enjoying it for at I can offer and, if part of that enjoyment is stress reduction, then so much the better.