Live Long, Die Short (31 page)

Martin was in charge of training for his company when he was still working and had always harbored a dream of being a teacher. So, one day, on a whim, he walked over to the local elementary school and went to the guidance counselor’s office. He asked if there were any children who were struggling and whom he might be able to tutor. Luckily, the counselor was
not closed-minded and paired him up with a struggling fifth grader, Brian. They began meeting once weekly at school and soon were meeting after school to enjoy a hot dog or go to a movie. Brian’s grades began to improve, and the counselor approached Martin about possibly seeing other students and asked whether there were more older adults who might be interested in helping students. And so was born the mentor program.

Once weekly, Martin and forty of his neighbors set up forty card tables in the dining room of their retirement community and wait for the school bus to arrive with forty students. They pair off and spend the next hour talking—about school, math, history, and life. The school reports that the students are doing better in their studies and that there is a marked reduction in behavioral problems. Meanwhile, Martin and his neighbors spend a good part of the week preparing for the meeting. They are planning a big party for the last day of school, and many are going to meet with their young friends over the summer. Martin is happy. He has a bounce in his step, and has secretly started a bank account in Brian’s name, which he hopes will be used as tuition for college. He knows, of course, that he won’t be alive to see Brian in college, but he’s proud nonetheless of Brian and cherishes their friendship.

Masterpiece Living Pearls for Having Children in Your Life

1. Are you ready for younger people in your life? A little uncertain about whether you’re ready or whether there are any kids out there who’d be interested in spending any time with you? Start slow. Spend time with children in your family if possible. Listen, observe, smile. Be relaxed. Show no signs of impatience or of having another place to go. The greatest gift we can give children is our time.
   
2. If you have no children in your family, try going to a children’s movie (you might consider going with a friend given today’s high sensitivity) or a playground or any place where children are, in order to observe and get sampling of their energy. Still interested?
   
3. Contact the local Big Brothers Big Sisters and inquire into the requirements to enter their program. These organizations usually pair younger adults with children but are not limited to that model.
   
4. Visit the local elementary school and see if it’s possible to become a mentor, or storyteller, or aide. Many schools’ history classes will welcome an eyewitness account of twentieth-century events you have lived through. Such an offering frequently leads to other possibilities at the school, such as teacher’s aide, or class grandfather or grandmother.
   
5. Inquire at the local library for any need for a children’s storyteller or reader. Most libraries have active programs for children and will welcome your participation.
   
6. Go to the local hospital’s children’s ward to see if they have need for volunteers. Many welcome baby rockers. My mother knitted caps for newborn infants. By the time she had to give up knitting due to arthritis, she had provided caps for hundreds of newborns.
   
7. Do you have a special skill that could benefit children? Woodworking? Knitting? A musical instrument? Language? Local organizations such as Boys & Girls Clubs, community centers, the YMCA, the YWCA, church groups, summer camps, and other community-based organizations are hungry for volunteers and instructors.
   
8. Of course, the Internet is a valuable source for volunteering with children. My mother, Marguerite, made over a hundred small teddy bears for children in war and in storm-ravaged countries. She never saw these children but felt enriched even by this anonymous association. Other possibilities are pen pals and financial sponsorship for children in third-world countries.
   

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
—VICTOR BORGE

N
orman Cousins reacted the way any of us would have on hearing he had an incurable, crippling illness. There was the shock, denial, and anger. But then, he broke from the rest of us. He decided he could not be a passive observer of his own health. Norman Cousins began to laugh.

Why not?
he thought. He was feeling pretty low and wanted to feel better. He knew laughter always made him feel physically, emotionally, and psychologically better, so why not laugh now? He had read in Hans Selye’s classic 1956 book,
The Stress of Life
, of how stress and negative emotions could cause negative chemical changes in the body.
¹
Couldn’t positive emotions, then, cause
positive
chemical changes? Why not laugh and see if this was possible?

Of course, most of us could think of a lot of reasons why not, but Norman, a journalist, editor, and world-peace activist, looked at his situation differently. In his 1979 book,
Anatomy of an Illness
, he describes how after his diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative disease of the spine, he rented a movie projector, Marx Brothers movies, and old episodes of
Candid Camera
.
²
He recognized almost immediately, after just ten minutes of laughing, that his pain was better. He continued to laugh. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed himself into remission for nearly thirty years, finally succumbing to heart disease. His physicians had no explanation for his remission. Could laughing have been responsible?

Results from the Boston University–based New England Centenarian Study indicate that it’s possible to laugh yourself to better health, aging, and even longevity.
³
A preliminary conclusion of this fifteen-year-plus study is that those who live to be a hundred or more seem to be able to handle stress better than the majority of people. These are people who have lived long enough to experience significant loss in their lives, so they are realists. Yet, they believe they will meet whatever lies ahead when the time comes, so there’s no need to fret about it now. (This is consistent with the “living in the present moment” approach we discussed in Tip Seven.)

Laughter researcher Robert Provine tells us that laughter is a primitive attribute, “an unconscious vocalization,” and he considers it a “universal human vocabulary.”
⁴
It is observable to some degree in other primates and is present in babies even before they can speak. Babies laugh as much as three hundred times per day, as opposed to us more somber adults, who average twenty times per day. Laughter is considered by most to be a human behavior and is strongly associated with positive human connection and social interaction, being part of a group. We have discussed social connection as a lifestyle characteristic strongly associated with successful aging, and so it would seem very consistent to associate better health with laughter. So what could be going on here? Can laughter somehow change our physiology?

Drs. Stanley Tan and Lee Berk of Loma Linda University have been studying the effects of “mirthful laughter” for over three decades. They have consistently demonstrated that laughter reduces stress hormones, which are known to suppress immunity. Conversely, laughter activates T cells, immunoglobulins, and natural killer cells, which collectively play a role
in rejecting tumors and cells infected with viruses, as well as protecting us from infection. Laughter also increases beta-endorphins, which improve mood, reduce pain, and increase relaxation.
⁵
The bottom line? Laughter seems to boost our immune system, which has the potential to assist us in resisting cancer and infection, as well as a number of other threats to our good health and successful aging, and we feel much better while all this is happening.

Beyond immunity, laughter is therapeutic for those who are experiencing pain. A recent research report from Oxford demonstrated elevated pain thresholds after episodes of “laughter till it hurts” in groups. The mechanism, Dr. Robin Dunbar, the lead investigator, concluded, is the release of endorphins, the morphine-like substances produced by our brains in the pituitary gland and hypothalamus, and which give us pain relief and a general feeling of well-being. Dr. Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist, also concluded that social laughter plays a key role in social bonding.
⁶
So, once again, we are reminded of the authentic needs we developed in our infancy as a species.

In addition to these positive effects, laughter is an “internal workout,” contracting the diaphragm and abdominal muscles and providing us some relaxation. We all recognize that it provides a physical and emotional release. Lastly, as noted above, it is a social connector, improving the quality of social interaction while enhancing the mood of those sharing the laughter.

Dr. Berk states that “the best clinicians understand that there is an intrinsic physiological intervention brought about by positive emotions such as mirthful laughter, optimism and hope. Lifestyle choices have a significant impact on health and disease and these are choices which we and the patient exercise control relative to prevention and treatment.”
⁷

The Dalai Lama, in his book
My Spiritual Journey
, calls himself a professional laugher.
⁸
Despite the many difficulties he has faced as a Tibetan leader in exile, he chooses to look at life “holistically”—i.e., from many perspectives—to focus on the always-present positive aspects, and to laugh easily.

Ellen Langer, the previously mentioned prolific researcher and author and professor of psychology at Harvard University, has spent her career demonstrating that by being attentive and mindful and aware, we can be
healthier. She believes that the placebo effect is real. When we physicians prescribe “sugar pills,” a treatment without documented effectiveness, and the patient gets better, we conclude that the illness was not real; the symptoms were imagined. In fact, the placebo effect is a powerful tool in the physician’s medical bag to help people feel better. Sir William Osler was a Canadian physician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and one of the founders of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and often called the “Father of Modern Medicine.” He, too, believed in the power of the placebo, acknowledging that patients become well because of their faith in the effectiveness of treatment.

Dr. Langer believes that to the extent we believe and focus on getting better, we actually change our brains and then our physiology and program our return to health.
⁹
This same belief is the core of much of the positive psychology movement, which in turn drives a large segment of the motivational and self-improvement industry. Self-improvement icons Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield tell us that we are what we think about.

So, to the extent that we laugh, readily and often, we are doing much more than presenting a positive image to the world. We are, it seems, programming ourselves to be happy and healthier, and we’re having fun doing it! There are many who believe that life is a head game. We choose to be happy; we choose to be positive. Likewise, we can choose to be unhappy and negative. Yes, life will throw us curveballs, challenges, and losses. It is an absolute certainty for those of us who have a pulse. As humans, unlike our brother and sister mammals with less developed cerebral cortexes, how we respond to these losses, what our minds choose to focus on, can make all the difference. We can beat our breasts and be a “woe is me” victim, or we can be like Norman Cousins and laugh. Laughing draws others to us. It increases our social connectivity, which, as we noted in Tip Four, is associated with higher likelihood of health and better aging. And, let’s face it: in the end, it’s more fun.

George is ninety-eight and living in assisted living at a retirement community in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. He is a CPA and has never studied the research on aging or laughter. He uses a walker to help him maneuver about his apartment. His wife, Helen—“She was a doll, I tell you”—is
gone. His brothers are gone. He has no children. This would seem to be that sour spot of life we all fear. Alone, impaired, and in George’s own words, “on death row.”