Good medicine
January 25, 2011 (Tuesday)
Yesterday at lunch Dwight and I ate at a local restaurant. At times we found it difficult to talk with each other because on the other side of the room there was a table of six older adults who were laughing loudly. I heard the lady at the table next to us say to her companion, “I like to hear people laughing.”
Not everyone likes laughter. Yesterday I heard a word on a television program that I had to look up. The word is “curmudgeon.” I’m familiar with the word, but I keep forgetting what it means. A “curmudgeon” is sometimes defined as “a person (especially an old man) who is easily annoyed or angered and who often complains.” Such people would not enjoy a meal when people at another table laugh loudly a lot.
How about you? Are you like the lady who likes to hear people laughing? Or are you a curmudgeon?
Remember this Scripture verse? “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Proverbs 17:22 NIV). I like “The Message” translation: “A cheerful disposition is good for your health; gloom and doom leave you bone-tired.”
Groucho Marx played a guy who returned from a safari in Africa, reporting, “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I don’t know.” If you are smiling a little bit right now, my day’s work is done.
