A Good Laugh: A Good Medicine

OK, maybe it is not the best medicine, but it sure has gotten me through some rough periods. Keeping a sense of humor has made a big difference in the battles I have faced, but it has not always been effective. It is kind of like the positive thinking approach, in that it is good to try and be positive about things, but can we maintain it 24/7? Perhaps some people can, but I can’t very often. The same is true with humor and laughter, but in all honesty, I can almost always find some reason to chuckle, even if it is not a full belly-laugh.

Finding humor

There are a lot of things to laugh about in our world, and why not indulge. It is free usually, unless you pay to see a comic or a comedic film. A joke can be fun, and they are freely shared online or if you know someone who is good at delivery, it can be another good source of a laugh. I don’t spend a lot of time around good joke tellers anymore, but did in my past. Salespeople were always good for a joke or two, however funny they were. With my background in business, I saw a lot of these “old-school” relics of a bygone era. Who knows, maybe it is still like that in sales.

Laughter is not exclusive to comics or jokesters. One thing I have come to learn is that being able to laugh at the simple things in life, and an important part is being able to laugh at myself. There is a vast reservoir of things I can laugh at myself about, and they may be the silliest things, but I have a lot of room for silly. Don’t get me wrong, I take my work in hep C very seriously, and it is hard to find humor in a disease that causes so much pain and misery, but there are moments.

Laughter gets us through hard times

A good friend of mine has been through the wars in his battle first with hep C and then cancer, now revisiting cancer and looking at a transplant. We talk frequently, and we laugh a lot. Some people may think that sounds weird. He and I don’t see it as weird because we share in an ability to laugh at life, ourselves, and the struggle.

I understand it can be hard to manage a laugh when we feel sick, and oh, how I know. But, when we can have a laugh, it is a good thing. It helps us deal with the stress that usually accompanies chronic illness like hep C, and that is a positive thing in my book!