How much do you really laugh?

The average adult laughs 15 times a day; the average child, more than 400 times. Developing and maintaining a sense of humour helps prevent and lift clinical depression because: laughing produces ‘feel good chemicals’ and even subdues physical pain, humour helps us reframe events and ‘get outside them’ rather than feeling swamped by them, a well developed sense of humour attracts other people to us socially and wide social networks are also a preventative and palliative as far as depression is concerned.

We all need to cultivate humour not just to lead happier lives but to encourage flexibility of thought.

Of course people with a sense of humour can develop depressions and one of the first symptoms may be a losing (lets say temporarily misplacing) ones sense of humour. Likewise a sign depression is receding is the return of humour.

Humour can provide us with seriously important and valid perspectives (see: How to be seriously funny) People who joke in the face of diversity may be said to be suffering ‘denial’ or cognitive dissonance by earnest folk but not necessarily. They may just have a developed capacity for objectivity. And was it Oscar Wilde who on his death bed uttered the immortal lines: ‘Either this wallpaper goes or I do!’

Have you really laughed today; even inwardly?

Mark