Perhaps when you hear your dad making a joke, you think, “here he goes again.” He says, “Hey kid, Why did the picture go to jail? Because it was framed.” Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we roll our eyes. Although most of these jokes are dry, they have the potential to make our daily lives light and unburdened. Little jokes that oftentimes we consider unimportant and embarrassing are part of the little joys of life. Therefore, I want to bring something that we often consider to be unnecessary, which is “Why should we laugh?” I will quote three different sources including, “Laughter Really is the Best Medicine? In Many Ways, that’s No Joke” by Marlene Cimons has written in the genre persuasion; “The Benefits of Laughing in the Office” by Betty-Ann Heggie, an opinion piece; and a research paper “How to Laugh Away Stress” by Matt Kaplan. The rhetorical situation of these three sources illustrates how laughter can benefit different and varying aspects of our lives. The purpose of these articles is to raise awareness of how significant laughter is in our lives. The audience for these articles are people who are too busy with their daily routine and activities that they forget to take a moment to pause, breathe, enjoy the beautiful day, and laugh. Although the Cimons’ article is based on a newspaper article, it is however found in the news article website. Thus the medium for Cimons’ article is the electronic device. Likewise, the medium of both, Heggie’s and Kaplan’s paper is technology devices.
Cimons, the first author writes with an amused tone, mentioning that laugh opens up the possibility to “live many years longer than [the] doctors initially predicted.” Her stance is that laughter not only makes us joyful, but in laughter, there is also the power to heal and/or give people who are sick and weak, a higher life expectancy. Furthermore, Heggie, the author of the second article, takes on her stance that even in our busy lives where work is piling up, we have to still remember to be joyful. To further develop this idea, Kaplan the third author maintains a the matter of fact tone. He explained the results of an experiment, which showed the correlation between our blood pressure and our happiness. Kaplan’s stance on this research is that laughter is the best medicine. He demonstrates how the chemicals in our brain change as we are placed in different situations.
Cimons begins her article by stressing that laughter must be our daily priority as she mentions that she is inspired by the 97-year-old Carl Reiner “who wake[s] up and tickle[s] [him]self while [he is} still in bed.” She explains how laughter and happiness tend to prolong human life. Cimons even used it in the title of her article. Knowing that she will discuss laughter, he wrote, “that’s no joke.” This is used to catch people’s attention, illustrating that even though it is not tangible and cannot be seen, real laughter has the ability to yield the same results as those that we would get from medicine. Cimons continues this discussion with an animated image of an hourglass where the sand path is covered by a large smiley face emoji. This hourglass represents the time that we have in this world that will eventually run out. The smiley face that stops the sand from running smoothly symbolizes the idea that when we laugh and our lives are filled with happiness, we indirectly extend our life span to “delay” the time of death. With intrigued tones, Cimons quoted Reiner who said, “When you can laugh, life is worth living… It keeps me young.” This further underscores his stance that life is beautiful when filled with happiness. Reiner also pointed out that with a joke in his days, he felt that laughter filled his life. Then, Cimons writes about how Reiner, with his 93-year-old friend Mel Brooks, both still smile widely and are healthy, demonstrating the impact of prioritizing happiness in our daily lives.
After showing the effects of laughter on our health, Cimons argues that with laughter, human beings improve socialization and interaction and consequently raise our life expectancy. To increase Cimons’ credibility as an author, he quoted Professor Sven Syebak, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who has 50 years of experience explaining how joking acts like “absorbers in a car” parallel “a mental shock absorber in everyday life.” The language that Cimons utilizes is parallelism, which illustrates how laughter helps alleviate the pressure of the things that burden our hearts, just as the frustration and irritation in us do not equate to the joy. This does not necessarily mean that we end up forgetting our hardships and difficulties, but at least with a joke and joy in our hearts, the burden feels lighter. Cimons then shifts her ideas to talk about how when we radiate happiness, people would be more likely to want to hang out with us. To support this idea, she also quoted Edward Creagan, a Mayo Clinic Professor of College of Medicine and Science, “Nobody wants to be around negative, whiny people. It’s a drain.” People are more “attracted to funny people,” because as human beings, we are always looking for happiness in our social lives. The reason why this is so, is because when we smile or laugh often, we also instill that happiness into the people around us. Our laughter is contagious.
Cimons’ final argument depicts how laughter improves our memories. This is implemented through “Clown Therapy” in the elders’ residence, where a clown comes in to joke, play music, and tell stories in an effort to improve memory and responsiveness. Cimons further supports this argument with evidence of “Clown Therapy” given to an old man in a hospital with Alzheimer’s disease. The clown’s interaction with this patient helped him to be more self-aware and remember his days as a youth. This demonstrates that the funny and unique presence of a clown brings a source of happiness to these elders, which leads to the maintenance of their memories. Cimons found it interesting how the red nose used by a clown, leads to the patient jogging back to the memory lane. Cimons then uses a metaphor bridge where the red nose connects the person’s memory to his past. Seeing the red nose can “collect the memory and then bring it to the present.”
Likewise, Heggie argues that in our daily work that tends to consume us, we must remember to laugh. When we choose to laugh while doing work, the workload will seem lighter to carry. Just like Cimons, Heggie also begins her article with an image of a horse on the beach laughing broadly and happily. Horses are symbols of hard working animals that are described as workers who work in a steady rhythmic environment and life. With this image, Heggie implies that horses have the same, repetitive routine every day. However, with an image of a horse laughing, Heggie stresses how workers can choose to be happy in their workplace. Moreover, Heggie continued this article with an embarrassing anecdote of when she laughed loudly and obnoxiously at a serious meeting with her boss in which “they turned and stared at me.” She uses this story to build connections with readers of her article, because many people can relate to this situation. On the other hand, people may also be ashamed to express themselves because of their fear of this shameful thing happening to them. But after she makes the reader conscious of her loud burst of laughter, Heggie develops her argument of the importance of laughing at the appropriate time. She stated, “our office had needed a good dose of laughter,” describing how these workers needed some joy to ease up their energy-draining and repetitive tasks. Heggie believes that her jokes are “something people look forward to each day,” as many forget the importance of laughter and to lighten up the atmosphere. It is because of the gloomy situation at workplaces, people tend to look for the light, the sense of happiness to ease the heavy burdens and difficulties in their work. In addition, within her article, she quotes research conducted by two well-known schools. She states that according to Wharton, “every chuckle or guffaw brings with it a host of business benefits.” She then follows this with a quotation from Professor Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School, who said, “Cracking jokes at work can make people seem more competent.” Heggie put these two quotations one after the other to develop the idea that a small joke if applied in a business situation can have a positive impact on the business. This is ironic because jokes in the workplace are deemed as not taking the job seriously. But the reality is that, through one or two jokes on the job, workplace dynamic is increased, and workers are motivated to work even harder.
After revealing the idea that when there is happiness at work, the business will run smoother, Heggie goes on to explain the effects of laughter in our bodies. Because the Mayo Clinic is a well-known source and is guaranteed that the explanation is accurate, similar to Cimons, Heggie also cites the results of research conducted by this site. The clinic explains that by “laughing heartily,” it not only “lightens your load,” but also increases “brain’s release of endorphins.” Endorphins are useful for increasing the level of human relaxation as well as decreasing symptoms of stress. Heggie then continues with employing a language device, juxtaposition, “a rollicking laugh fires up and then cools down your stress response.” Through this, Heggie portrays how with a passionate laugh, our mentality responses by reducing our stress and heavy burden. After showing the effects of laughter on everyone, Heggie shifts to illustrating to the bosses how radiating a positive environment to the business will have positive impacts on the workplace and his employees. Heggie analyzes the Key Performance Indicator (KPI), pointing out that the KPI effect is that with the joy in the work atmosphere, the rates of staff absenteeism decrease. This also leads to another aspect of the KPI is the rate of productivity, as when the environment is not stressful, the employees tend to be more involved in the workplace. Heggie quotes from research about a worker, working with a light heart, they become 10% more productive. She incorporated this statistic to show the company bosses that the presence of happiness in work, not only does it benefit workers, but also the business as a whole. Therefore, happiness and freedom in the work environment must be implemented so that the business is more advanced.
To further clarify the arguments of the Cimons and Heggies’ article, Kaplan explained the relationship between happiness and level of stress. Similarly, Kaplan also supports with research to explain how the phrase that is commonly used, “laughter is the best medicine,” is true. Kaplan discusses the research from 2006, conducted by Berk about happiness begins to arise before we laugh. When participants were told to watch humorous videos for 30 minutes, their “adrenaline was down [by] 35%” this drastic percentage is used by Kaplan to show that when we are happy, our stress levels will automatically go down too. And to further emphasize this, Kaplan stated the fact that even with only the anticipation of undergoing a happy experience, their stress levels are already lowered. This explains Cimons’ and Heggies’ discussions about the relationship between happiness and stress levels, where there is a negative linear relationship, meaning that when our happiness level is increased, consequently our stress level is decreased. By citing Berk’s article, “It’s No Joke, We Need to Start Prescribing Humor as Medication,” Kaplan implemented an inclusive language to elaborate on how the results of this research is a great discovery that hospitals should begin to instill joy in their patients as medicine. Often, the things that most people do not consider important, like laughter, is something that is needed by them to help with their mental health.
Laughter must be one of the priorities in our lives. To emphasize the importance of laughing Cimons concludes his article by quoting a joke that Reiners said, “Keep laughing … You’ll live forever.” With exaggeration he said, if we live full of joy, then our lives will be longer than our life expectancies. On the other hand, Heggie closed the article by giving the suggestion “Let your laugh free. Not all day, everyday of course,” explaining that we should not stop ourselves from laughing daily, because we are afraid and ashamed, but, we also have to know the situation and timing, and know when and where we can laugh freely. While Cimons makes a joke about the longevity of life when we laugh often, and Heggie concludes her piece by insinuating herself and giving the readers advice, Kaplan writes about what the next steps are in this research. Therefore, readers can become curious about what effects will arise in our bodies when we laugh. A day spent without laughing is a day wasted. Here is another attempt, if you did not laugh at the first one “What did the big chimney says to the small chimney? You are too little to smoke.”
Reference
Cimons, Marlene. (2019, June 15). Laughter Really is the Best Medicine? In Many Ways, that’s No Joke. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/laughter-really-is-the-best-medicine-in-many-ways-thats-no-joke/2019/06/14/9f159208-8955-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html
Heggie, Betty-Ann. (2018, November 16). The Benefits of Laughing in the Office. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/11/the-benefits-of-laughing-in-the-office
Kaplan, Matt. (2008, April 7). How to Laugh Away Stress. Retrieved from https://www-nature-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/articles/news.2008.741
