How Humor Heals

I had to spend a week or so in the hospital few years ago. A happy dinner turned into
some major problems for my physical well-being. I was fairly depressed and frustrated one night
after the doctor working at St. John Hospital in Naga City had given me the news that still more
medical examinations would be needed, which meant another few days in an uncomfortable bed
I never used to be in the past few years- much worst of the needles pinned every time I get
checked.
As I thought about food poisoning, the recessive dizziness began again, and I was sure
that my condition might only become more serious-- if I could just have not eaten the stale fish
that I thought was in very edible condition. About the time I began to wonder if I would ever see
my own home again at the earliest time, my classmate from my school happened to stopped by
because her grandmother was also confined in the same medical establishment. She was, quite
literally, one of our class clowns. She always had great joke on the tip of her tongue. She was the
mascot in our regular conversations because her antics were so funny. Even now I can't help but
smile when I think about her.
Two hours after she left, I felt great. I suddenly felt the rush of excitement that came after
that exclusive conversation and I could not even feel the same dizziness again when I was
feeling that time before my classmate visited me. The next morning, and that evening, all of my
vital health conditions were getting positive. An unexpected recovery? Actually, yes. Study after
study has indicated that humor has interesting healing powers.
Recent mental health studies have shown that laughter can stimulate areas of the brain
that release endorphins, helping us to see our situation more clearly.
The benefits of humor, though, aren't all mental. Humor triggers laughter. According to
physiological studies, the laughter, in turn, stimulates our cardiovascular systems by increasing
the rate at which the heart beats and contracting the muscles. In fact, one study suggested that
laughing one hundred times per day is the equivalent of spending ten minutes on a rowing
machine.
The healing power of humor is wide-ranging in scope and situation. Though medically, the
interesting healing powers of humor are still being studied by many scientists , humor clearly
heals the spirit - a part of every one of us which is often neglected by medicine and science.
Seeing the humor in our painful or emotional situations can free us from the chains we
have built around ourselves, helping us to recognize that life is more than anger or pain or
sorrow, but that it is full of humor and the contagious sound of laughter.
So, remembering from the line popularized by famous Late Filipino actor, Dolphy , "Laughter is
the best medicine. Great, isnt it?

The onset of technology has become a great factor that made millions of people around
the world at ease.
Almost everyone believes that technology has made life easier and more comfortable and
that it has enabled us to perform tasks that we could not do otherwise. A list of the benefits of
technology would be very long indeed. However, as with almost everything we human beings
have created, technology has a downside. There is, we might say, a dark side to technology.
For openers, technology does not necessarily make life simpler; rather, it tends to make
life more complicated. Nowadays, for example, nearly every discussion of the wonderful power
of technology to enrich our lives mentions the cell phone. Certainly, the instant communication
brought about by the telephone has been a great advantage. It was originally a rather simple
device that anyone could learn to use in a matter of minutes, and we soon began using phones
to make and receive phone calls, usually about matters of some consequence.
Another example of the complexity of modern technology is the computer. Again, nobody
can deny that computers have enabled us to share information, process data, and perform
numerous other tasks with speed and ease that, as recently as a generation ago, we would have
thought impossible. Computer technology has been advancing so rapidly that new applications
are discovered faster than anyone can keep pace and that's a problem.
Although most users can and do master some of the basic operations, most computer
owners cannot use many of the functions that are built into computer programs. Much has been
written about how the younger generations who have been brought up in the computer age
know intuitively how to use these machines. However, considerable anecdotal evidence
suggests that they learn only what amuses or entertains them. Most haven't the patience or the
desire to go through the complicated process of learning more utilitarian programs. Furthermore,
they tend to use computers rather than their own brains for many tasks that they should be able
to perform without mechanical assistance. It is possible to argue that the invention of the
calculator is largely responsible for the inability of many people to do simple math; it is likewise
possible to prove that electronic spell-checking has created at least one generation of individuals
who cannot spell and know nothing about the logic of language.
Complexity is not the only downside of computers. They have created an even greater
gap between the rich and the poor, the educated and uneducated. To use these devices, one
needs both experience and education. Lacking computers at home, poorer people do not have
the opportunity to gain much experience with them. Even as the computer becomes a
commodity the pace of technology is so rapid that these individuals are light years behind the
more fortunate people. Furthermore, since computer skills must be learnedless educated
individuals have an insurmountable disadvantage. Educated individuals can use computers to
expand their knowledge; uneducated or less educated people are stuck where they are. The gap
widens.
Finally, with respect to computers, many of the advantages have spawned a nightmarish
array of problems. While technology has now given us the ability to shop from home, it has
opened a whole new frontier in which con artists can conduct scams a frontier that authorities
admit is impossible to police. While it has enabled us to bank by mail, it has brought on a wave
of identity theft such as we have never before seen. While it enables banks and other
organizations to process data with lightning speed, electronic processing creates greater
opportunity for error. One incorrect keystroke can set in motion an automated series of mistakes
that are not easily detected or corrected. Every day there is a report of some mass mailing,
system glitch, or loss of data brought on by a single and very simple human error that spun out
of control when a mindless computer took over and ran with it.

Consider automated answering systems. The only individuals who see any benefit in
these systems are executives who, with their eyes on the bottom-line, look upon them as a
cheap way to reduce or eliminate customer service personnel. These systems create the illusion
of offering customer service when, in fact, they have practically eliminated customer service
altogether. Automated answering systems constitute an area of technology that symbolizes
what happens when tasks that only a human being can perform effectively are relegated to
machines. Customers universally hate these systems because they provide little or no service,
waste time, and often put the customer into an electronic loop that leads nowhere. The worst of
these systems are those that provide voice messages in which a machine pretends to be a real
human being While we may find definite advantages to almost any technological advancement,
it is very difficult to find anything good to say about automated phone systems.
In contrast, few of us question the value of technological advances in transportation
notably motor vehicles and airplanes. Because of these developments, we can travel further and
faster than anyone a century ago would have imagined possible.
However, even here
technology has its downside. We live in a more dangerous world, not only because cars, trucks,
and airplanes can kill but also because the ease and speed with which we can get from one place
to another has made national borders more porous.
In addition, we have been seriously
depleting the Earth's natural resources to run these machines and have appreciably hastened
global warming because of the gasses that they emit. On a simpler level, too, we may perhaps
question whether it is necessarily desirable to go further and faster. Is it always better? Do we
enjoy the trip more, or has the process of getting there become a hassle? For what are we
saving all this precious time to have more time to watch commercials on TV, many of them
promoting technology that we don't need?
Entertainment is probably the one area in which technology has had positive effects with
very little negative impact. If the content of television is mediocre, we can't really blame that on
technology. If the music that people listen to on their various gadgets is trash, we can't blame
the gadgets. If we are spending more time being entertained because we have, thanks to
technology, wide variety entertainments to choose from, that is not necessarily a bad thing. We
can complain about the intrusion of too much marketing in the entertainment media, but that is
not the fault of technology. Indeed, with television, there's a quiet little war going on between
the technology that subtly tries to sell us products and the technology that enables us to bleep
out the advertisements.
To be objective about it, the so-called downside of technology real as it is represents
more what's wrong with us than what's wrong with our creations. We are making them
complicated, often more than they need to be, because we arrogantly believe that man will
always be the master of the machine. We turn the cell phone into a public nuisance and a safety
hazard instead of a useful tool because we are too foolish to use it wisely. We cause sporadic
outbreaks of massive computer errors because we are stupid and careless; what we call
computer errors are, in fact, idiotic blunders made by human beings. We are the self-destructive
species who turn machines for transportation into weapons of mass destruction. The real issue
regarding technology is not whether it is good or bad but whether we are grown-up and mature
enough to use wisely what we have created. The evidence suggests that, on the whole, we are
not. Indeed, we have never been ever since we created a tool by fastening a pointed rock to a
stick and then decided that it could also be used to smash the skull of someone we didn't like.