Laughter As Medicine
When the woman who introduced you to Green Eggs and Ham asks if you ever laugh, that's a pointed question.
Perhaps sharpened by the technologically efficient brevity of a text inquiry, that was the question with which my mom confronted me yesterday. Like Hermione in the Harry Potter series, my recourse when confronting anything is to go to the library. That's what she and I always do. I've found it safe to filter the outside world through the C. S. Lewis section of my mental book reserve, and he offered me a retreat from the question at hand. In Mere Christianity, he cautioned against evaluating people against some scale for outward happiness that we imagine to be objective. People are different, he says. People's experiences are different. The woman of whom we wonder, "Does she ever laugh?" might have become a lot more free at expressing joy over the last year. She may, in fact, more deliberately focus on whatever is good, whatever is lovely, and whatever is of good report than someone whose neurological makeup doesn't take much to reach a boiling point of effervescent, easily expressed optimism.
But this is my MOM. She sees through my literary excuses. She spent decades as part of the primary, God ordained, protection between me and any truly calamitous consequence I might complain of. She is fully invested in a lifelong mission to show me that the world, if not a safe place entirely, at least offers abundant consolations to return smiles to our faces. She has every right to check on the status of that mission, the return of that emotional investment. With Robert G. Lee, who possesses the ponderous initial as well as expert credentials as a Christian comedian, my mom can ask in any terms she chooses whether I've misplaced a sense of humor which is one of life's most precious inheritances. Lee riffs that many people who have lost their sense of humor over time haven't actually noticed. "I beg to differ," he intones in a comically pretentious accent that goes well with defensiveness, "I have quite a KEEN wit." He closes his impression with a pathetically fizzling "Tee hee, Tee hee," shakes his head with compassion, and then he enlists support. "We should hold telethons for these people."
Am I one of THESE people? If, as mom quoted from the Bible we both revere, laughter does good like a medicine, do I need to up my daily dose in order to liven up my sometimes sallow countenance? As I've quoted before, Pastor Dr. Alan Wright says that our emotions are perfectly obedient servants to our thoughts. Since people can't see the thoughts that run most prominently in our mental script, perhaps God designed facial expressions and laughter as a helpful checkup. Mom's inquiry gave me license to put aside Matterhorn as an excellent, if very serious, novel on the Vietnam War and, in the words of the short-lived show Studio 60, find the funny. I didn't have to search far, now that I had an excuse of making someone ELSE feel better. That very morning, my wife and I leavened our a.m. routine with thoughts of Ava Morgenstern, the pint-sized, pushy neighbor on Girl Meets World. Even when navigating sadness bigger than shows canceled too soon, the funny can be found. A friend of mine who knows more about the seriousness of the political world than I ever will found the funny in challenging a local ministry's inadequate response to the flooding in Texas. When the ministry silenced him rather than addressing his concerns, he found the funny by adding the ministry's front man to his list of Honor Blocks on Twitter. If even a fictional strategic mastermind like Josh Lyman on the I-wish-real-life-were-like-
Perhaps sharpened by the technologically efficient brevity of a text inquiry, that was the question with which my mom confronted me yesterday. Like Hermione in the Harry Potter series, my recourse when confronting anything is to go to the library. That's what she and I always do. I've found it safe to filter the outside world through the C. S. Lewis section of my mental book reserve, and he offered me a retreat from the question at hand. In Mere Christianity, he cautioned against evaluating people against some scale for outward happiness that we imagine to be objective. People are different, he says. People's experiences are different. The woman of whom we wonder, "Does she ever laugh?" might have become a lot more free at expressing joy over the last year. She may, in fact, more deliberately focus on whatever is good, whatever is lovely, and whatever is of good report than someone whose neurological makeup doesn't take much to reach a boiling point of effervescent, easily expressed optimism.
But this is my MOM. She sees through my literary excuses. She spent decades as part of the primary, God ordained, protection between me and any truly calamitous consequence I might complain of. She is fully invested in a lifelong mission to show me that the world, if not a safe place entirely, at least offers abundant consolations to return smiles to our faces. She has every right to check on the status of that mission, the return of that emotional investment. With Robert G. Lee, who possesses the ponderous initial as well as expert credentials as a Christian comedian, my mom can ask in any terms she chooses whether I've misplaced a sense of humor which is one of life's most precious inheritances. Lee riffs that many people who have lost their sense of humor over time haven't actually noticed. "I beg to differ," he intones in a comically pretentious accent that goes well with defensiveness, "I have quite a KEEN wit." He closes his impression with a pathetically fizzling "Tee hee, Tee hee," shakes his head with compassion, and then he enlists support. "We should hold telethons for these people."
Am I one of THESE people? If, as mom quoted from the Bible we both revere, laughter does good like a medicine, do I need to up my daily dose in order to liven up my sometimes sallow countenance? As I've quoted before, Pastor Dr. Alan Wright says that our emotions are perfectly obedient servants to our thoughts. Since people can't see the thoughts that run most prominently in our mental script, perhaps God designed facial expressions and laughter as a helpful checkup. Mom's inquiry gave me license to put aside Matterhorn as an excellent, if very serious, novel on the Vietnam War and, in the words of the short-lived show Studio 60, find the funny. I didn't have to search far, now that I had an excuse of making someone ELSE feel better. That very morning, my wife and I leavened our a.m. routine with thoughts of Ava Morgenstern, the pint-sized, pushy neighbor on Girl Meets World. Even when navigating sadness bigger than shows canceled too soon, the funny can be found. A friend of mine who knows more about the seriousness of the political world than I ever will found the funny in challenging a local ministry's inadequate response to the flooding in Texas. When the ministry silenced him rather than addressing his concerns, he found the funny by adding the ministry's front man to his list of Honor Blocks on Twitter. If even a fictional strategic mastermind like Josh Lyman on the I-wish-real-life-were-like-
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