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Hubble bubble, toil and trouble……how a right good cackle is the perfect cure!
They say laughter has always been the best medicine – and it’s generally true, at least psychologically speaking, together with it certainly being the cheapest.
Of all our responses, laughter is one of the most instinctive. Along with eating and sleeping, we are hardwired to laugh from birth. How can anyone resist the gurgles of delight that emanate from our babies and tots, laughing hysterically at the sight of their own toes, or bursting into gales of laughter as we tickle them or losing their breath giggling over the miraculous hilarity of the ordinary world?
Over the past few years, in addition to the ordinary trials of everyday life, we have had the anxiety of an economic downturn and the worries about our own financial security, not to mention our emotional wellbeing when confronted with the international horrors of human suppression.
It is true that conservatism flourishes in times of personal angst, but so, unbelievably, does comedy. It is really no coincidence that the last Great Depression was also the era that fostered the screwball comedies of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, together with the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Depression has a way of producing comedic displays of the human condition within all of our lives. When we find a way of laughing at even our most troubled moments, we connect with others and somehow find a way through any sadness. We know that nothing seems to be sacred to our stand-up comics when it comes to having a laugh, and thankfully it is this that helps to take us out of our self-made mental cages. (Time for a plug for the training company, ‘Laughology’ that specialises in humour being brought into all elements of corporate development!)
Even at their darkest, comedies are an expression of optimism, the pursuit of correction, of redemption, or of just doing better, someday. Be it granted to us via the genius of our very own much loved and much missed, Rik Mayall, not to mention, Robin Williams, or the delightful French & Saunders, the surreal Monty Python or even the madcap mayhem of the Carry On films….laughter provides us with a prescription for total wellbeing. It can be bitter, hysterical or sinister: most of the time, though, it is not just a symptom of psychological health, but one of real and concrete healing.
Laughter is an expression of complete and utter joy, individual or joint – everyone knows just how much better they feel after having had one hell of a belly aching laugh, either alone (!?!) or, ideally, with others around them – when the tears are rolling down your face, inhibitions gone and complete composure has been lost – surely, this has got to be the best thing ever and something that we aim for every day? Other than the most obvious, single exception (!), there’s nothing else like it!
It isn’t just a way of escaping our troubles, laughter provides us with a way of solving them. It is a social expression of happiness and hope. The classics are full of expressions such as, “Know thyself” and “Heal thyself”, so come on everybody, how about we flush out those toxins and raise our serotonin levels naturally, by laughing ourselves crazy for a change? Let’s summon up our loudest, wildest and most witch-like cackles for Halloween this year – we could all do with a proper guffaw on a daily basis for the rest of our lives and I know for a fact that we would certainly feel a whole lot healthier and happier for it!
For all you budding witches and wizards out there, practising either at home or heading off to Hogwarts, enjoy yourselves and have a thoroughly fun-filled Happy Halloween!!