Humor As Healing Resource

Humor has survival value. Life's hurts are more endurable when you have a sense of humor.

As a therapist, I could always sense when a hurting counselee is getting well. He or she begins to quit taking himself or herself so seriously. It comes with a sense of humor, laughing about one's self.

Let me suggest how to experience it. Look into the eyes of a child who is quite loved and caressed. Watch the child playing with you. Savor the child's natural joyfulness. And you'll experience the sheer delight of a child's laughter.

Learn humor from the children. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu writes, "It is natural for children to laugh and to see the humor in all sorts of things, whether they be real, imagined or their own creation. They revel in the comic."

As the popular Proverbs says, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength." (17:22)