Laughing Yourself Well
"Optimism supplies the basic energy of civilization. Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time."
Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins, who edited Saturday Review for more than 30 years, was a great fan of laughter. After he was diagnosed with a life threatening form of arthiritis, he checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel. He hired a nurse to take a sample of his blood, and then he laughed. He laughed every day over and over while watching funny films and listening to funny albums. He wanted only funny people in his room. He and his nurse conducted an experiment and discovered that after five minutes of genuine belly laughter, his immune system cells increased in number and activity by 50 percent. Cousins turned pessimism into gold-plated optimism. He lived and laughed for twenty six more years.
