Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

Sense of Humor is a Gift

“A sense of humor is God’s gift to keep you stable... without a sense of humor the world will crack you up.” Or, so Murray Banks, a professor of psychology in Midland, Mich., told Canadian doctors earlier this summer when he was their guest lecturer at the annual convention of the Ontario Medical Association held in Toronto.

Dr. Banks’ remarks -- carried in a news article published in the June 4 issue of the newspaper “The Globe and Mail” -- included several other ideas worth an Army wife’s attention. For that matter, they could apply to all persons.

“Everyone,” the doctor declared, “has four driving forces: everyone wants to live, to feel important, to be loved and to experience change and variety.”

That sounds all right.

But achieving these four things is not going to guarantee complete happiness. There is no such thing as a totally happy existence -- not in this world.

Life cannot unfold like a fairy tale. Never can a person arrive on a plateau and then “live happily ever after.” Because, life is a matter of ups and downs. Problems and frustrations are as certain as sunrise and sunset.

It follows then that the question is: how to adjust when life slaps you with a blow that knocks you to your knees.

The Michigan psychologist discussed the same idea by saying this: “The only difference between a happy person and a broken soul is not the problem but the reaction to it.”

In adjusting to life’s difficulties a sense of humor is highly important. The USA psychologist didn’t say so to his Canadian audience, but a sense of sorrow -- the ability to weep -- is also highly important.

At the same time God was building into man the know-how to spread his lips in a smile and to utter sounds of mirth from his voice box, God also fashioned the mechanisms by which man can sob and cry out in anguish as tears gush from his eyes and run down his cheeks.

But this ability to weep is no excuse to go off and sit in the corner and boo-boo for hours every time something doesn’t go to suit you.

Tears are for true sorrow. Indeed, there are times to have a good cry, times to “let tears run down like a river,” as the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah -- the weeping prophet --wrote in one of his sad poems.

Through the ages, the poets, the wise men, the comedians have offered many differing definitions for laughter and laughing.

Bob Hope has said that “laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over, and showing it principally in one spot.” Charlie Chaplin called laughter “the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.”

Carl Sandburg is quoted as having said that “the right laughter is medicine to weary bones.” Ethel Barrymore once declared:

“You grow up the day you have the first real laugh -- at yourself.”

Let’s agree with these definitions. And, with what the Michigan psychologist told the Canadian doctors. Let’s accept a sense of humor as God’s gift to help us adjust to life. Let’s cry when we must, but laugh every day!

Published August 1982. Click your browser’s “Back” key to return.