Laughing Matters

The other day I was in a bad mood all day. I just felt like I had too much to do and everyone was annoying me. By evening I was just exhausted and irritable. Finally having a chance to relax, I played a comedy special I had downloaded on my computer and found myself giggling away within seconds, all my stress melting away.


It's amazing how powerful humor can be.


Laughter is one of the greatest things about life. It has so many benefits: it gets your heart rate up, burns calories, relieves stress, releases those feel good endorphins and helps promote positive thinking. It's just an all-around wonder drug.


Being able to make others laugh is a great gift. I love watching stand-up comics perform. They do such an awesome job of talking about everyday things and making them funny. One thing I think is so important to have is the ability to laugh at ourselves. Comedians are really good at that, and they help us to laugh at ourselves as well.


Sometimes in life, you just have to laugh. Being able to laugh at those little screw-ups we make or the silly things the kids or pets do gives us a break from the dreary and serious routine of work, the pressures at home, the bills piling up and having to deal with whatever problems may jump out at us.


While MS is no laughing matter, I have found not taking some of its effects on me too seriously makes them easier to deal with. Walking a lot slower than I used to is a pain, but when people are waiting for me I just smile and say, "Here I come" or "I'm on my way, just a little slow these days."


Having MS has also turned me into a klutz. No matter how hard I try, I cannot avoid the occasional clumsy episode. I trip, I fall, I veer to the left. I have fallen in the snow three times this winter just while shoveling or brushing off the car. Picture a tree toppling over in the forest. Timberrrrr! That's me.


I could easily get frustrated by the physical challenges in my life. Falling down and having to struggle to get back up is no picnic to be sure. I have learned to make light of my own lack of coordination, though.


A couple I know came over a while back with their eighteen-month-old boy. We were on the front porch and he started climbing down the steps using his arms and legs and I said, "He goes down the steps like I do."


Sometimes I do feel like a toddler - physically. I mean, I'm not throwing tantrums or grabbing whatever I want and saying it's mine. A grown woman acting like that - now that would be funny.




Recommended reading: Someone I think was really funny was Erma Bombeck. Her humor-filled tale of her life as a suburban mom in The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank is a page-turning laugh riot.

Inspiration for a Positive Attitude

Keeping a positive attitude isn't easy. So many things can happen in our lives that bring about negative feelings, and even though we fight off those feelings, they can return at any time. We may feel sorry for ourselves, or we find ourselves getting discouraged. Sometimes a positive attitude needs a little nudge.

Sometimes that nudge can come from being inspired by people who are going through the same troubles we are or who have overcome other adversities. Even people we don't even know can inspire us with their positive attitude.

Recently, three people, one of whom I did not even see, have been an inspiration to me.

I saw a story on the news about an elderly man who lost his life savings in the highly publicized Madoff scandal. This man was given a job at his local grocery, where he serves as a customer greeter. In these tough economic times, this man, who retired years ago, is back in the workforce, the victim of greed, theft and dishonesty.

Still, his positive attitude was apparent. He smiled and said he's got a job to do, summing up his new circumstances. He seemed to enjoy what he's doing, and his boss even called him an inspiration to people going through tough times due to the current economy.

It's hard to imagine losing everything you've worked for your whole life. I was really inspired by someone going through that at his age doing what he's got to do to make ends meet. It certainly reinforced my desire to get back to work!

On VH1's show Sober House (I watch a lot of VH1), Rodney King, the reluctantly famous victim of a beating by LA police back in 1991, paid a visit to the scene of the incident. He said he forgives the police officers who beat him, and pointed out that it takes more energy to be angry than to forgive. He said he feels lucky to be alive these days. It was such a positive way to look at having to deal with what he went through.

I remember seeing Rodney King on the news after the LA riots broke out. He was an inspiration even then asking, "Can we just get along?" Hearing him speak about that time in his life now, I found it inspiring that he has moved on and has no ill feelings about what happened.

At my most recent MS treatment, I spoke with a woman whose daughter has progressive MS. Her daughter is my age and lives in a nursing home. Her mother described her as being strong-willed. She said her daughter handles all her own affairs and is very active in her own care and treatment. She told me about how her daughter had joked about her condition during one of their recent visits.


The woman said her daughter had been through a lot in her life before MS, and that the MS hit her very suddenly and progressed pretty fast. But the daughter sounds like a fighter, and I can't help but think if someone in her situation can have that good of an attitude, there's no reason I can't.

Stories like the ones about these three people, in however small a way, really do help me to keep my own positive attitude going. I also personally know people who've dealt with adversity, and their strength always inspires me as well.

Knowing or hearing about people who've beat the odds, or are dealing with a bad situation the best way they know how gives us hope. Their inspiring stories can help us to put things in perspective and maintain a positive attitude when we experience difficulties in our own lives.

Gadget Overload (or Fondly Remembering the Rotary Phone)

In the preview for the new movie He's Just Not That into You, Drew Barrymore's character laments about being rejected via several different technologies. Given today's technology, it's not much of an exaggeration.

Cell phones, PDA's, portable DVD players, Blackberry, Bluetooth, text messaging, iPhone, GPS...my head is spinning. With all the techno-gadgets out there, I have to wonder, how did we ever survive without all this stuff?

Well, we did. Some of us still do. I have a cell phone, but it's not even a camera phone. It has text messaging, but I've never sent a single text message.

I don't have GPS in my car. I don't do a lot of long distance driving, and I use the old fashioned county road atlas if I'm going to an unfamiliar part of town.

I've always been a little resistant to technology. I guess I'm old-fashioned. I grew up in the age of rotary phones (I always liked the sound the dial made), and when I was a little kid we had a black and white TV. When I was in high school, we got cable TV, an answering machine and a VCR, the hot new technologies of their time. Yet, I remember when CDs came out I refused to buy them for the longest time.

It's amazing how far we've come, how much communication has evolved. But while the function and convenience of all the latest technology is appealing, I think we may be too reliant on some of these gadgets.

Do we really need to pay the cable bill while we're ordering lunch at the drive-thru? People are so into multi-tasking these days they are even conducting business by Bluetooth at the grocery while choosing pasta sauce. I once saw a husband and wife talking on their cell phones at the grocery...to each other. She had called him from the next aisle, and he was walking toward her. Geez!

While it's great we can receive or send information from anywhere, I worry about what all these gadgets have done to us.

It's like we've become gadget slaves. People who are so addicted to text messaging, we will risk getting into trouble at work or school. Or who laugh in the face of danger by texting while driving. Or who have to have every new gadget that hits the market, we don't care what it does, we just know we have to have it! Or who can't just relax and enjoy our leisure time without allowing ourselves to be repeatedly interrupted by our ringtone. Or who'd rather drive into a tree than have to read a paper map.

Seriously though, sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when we didn't have all this stuff. Things are moving so rapidly these days, and everyone just seems so stressed out, doing more and working faster, that I find myself missing the simpler times.

Still, all the technology we have is pretty neat, and it does make life easier and allow us to get information faster. But it may have the tendency to drive you nuts. Think of poor Drew!