Happy Halloween! Here is hoping it is filled with love and laughter. Laughter has healing properties. Couples who celebrate 25th and 50th anniversaries say that it was laughter and forgiveness that helped their marriages last through the years.
Marlo Thomas, Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny, tells us that it was through laughter that her father built St. Jude’s Hospital for Children.
Here is an excerpt from an interview about love, anger, and laughter between her parents. NPR host Scott Simon asks, “Could you recount for us. . .one of the few times your father got genuinely angry at the dining table and what he said when he went stalking up the staircase?”
“My parents were bickering at the table and after a while my dad got up and he walked across the marble floor of our entry hall to the bottom of the staircase, the carved staircase, and he put his hand on the carved knob of the staircase and up above him was this Venetian chandelier. And he screamed at my mother in this very loud voice, and he said, Rosemary, I can’t live like this anymore. And then he fell over laughing.” Marlo Thomas Remembers ‘Growing Up Laughing’ : NPR
What makes laughter so beneficial? First it is contagious. And second, laughter prompts changes in the body that may help the immune and endocrine systems to function better .Laughter Remains Good Medicine
“All you need in the world is love and laughter. That’s all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.” August Wilson, playwright.
Laughter is contagious. We learned that though research from Robert Provine, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland. But we also know that when people laugh, you tend to laugh too. Try laughing alone in a crowd and within minutes the the laughter will spread, gleefully, and the love will just bubble up and over!
Copyright 2010 Rita Watson/ All Rights Reserved