Video Transcript: Sense of Humor
So do you think it's okay to laugh when people are old? It seems to me like there are. There are certain cultural forces which tell us that when you get older, you shouldn't be laughing anymore. When you get older, you need to be more serious, more subdued, more, more focused on the the important things in life, which are never funny, I guess. The question becomes, is it okay for me to laugh when I'm old? And especially as we're senior ministers, is it okay for us? To do things that help senior citizens laugh Snoopy, Snoopy is one of the all time great characters you've been around just forever. And one of the things that is interesting about Snoopy as you see him laughing from time to time. And the question we need to ask is, can we laugh with an elderly person is senior ministers. Can we be laughing when we interact with older folks. And I think one of the things that, that I have experienced over the years, given my role as pastor in people's lives and as, as leader in their church, and as someone who was desirous of helping them to, to find their way in their senior years, the ability to laugh seemed to me to be a very important thing to do. And to make possible it, and so one of the things that I've, I used to hear, I don't hear anymore, because now now it's a little more often than it happened. But people would say, when you give us permission to laugh, even if we're in church, and that's true, we need to have permission to laugh, we need to have the opportunity to laugh, we need to have an an open door to laughter because laughter is, I think, a gift of God. It's as we are looking at the strange way some things are associated with each other. All you can do is laugh, it just Oh, you gotta be kidding me. This is so dumb. And as senior ministers, I think we have an opportunity to help people laugh. Not to be cynical not to laugh at other people and what's wrong with them, but to laugh, because it's just good for us to laugh. Even though some of our culture gives us the idea that elderly people are grumpy, grumpy, they have no sense of humor. And so they're, they're always grumpy, they're scowling. They're yelling at people. They're just, they're always wanting others to, to get off my yard. And we're gonna see that a little more. The seniors that we ministered most likely seeing the movie Grumpy Old Men, a 1993 movie about two guys who scowl almost all the time. They are the epitome of what elderly people are like. It seems that what what we think it was a very popular movie. And it even had a sequel that was produced but Grumpy Old Men had these two guys who, who just were always they were upset about various things. And it, it portrayed them as though they are normal elderly guys. And so they're grumpy. And that may be what people think of when they see themselves growing older that they are going to turn into grumpy people. That's true. People with Alzheimer's and dementia are prone to be grumpy and irritable. That's part of the deterioration of the brain. It is not a moral failure on their part. It's not something that that is problematic actually in their lives. It actually may be a side effect of the condition. And could also be that as these people see their mental faculties slipping away, they get angry because they can't stop it. They can't get
dementia. They're forgetfulness, their sense of loss of personal identity that autobiographical loss would tend to make us grumpy because we don't even know who we are anymore Clint Eastwood had this this movie called Gran Torino and and it features at one point with a shotgun pointed at some of the neighbor kids Get off my lawn. And that idea of Get off my lawn is is one that it says this is mine. Finally, I have something I can call mine. Now will you get off it You're bothering it not talk show host David Letterman may not have created that phrase, but he certainly popularized it. And Indiana born Boomer jumped at the phrase, adapt. Adapting is one of his signature tag lines beginning in 1980. So in 1980, already, if you were watching the Late Show with David Letterman, you would be treated every now and then to the line, get off my lawn and it was taken in into mainstream American consciousness that that get off my lawn. It was a line that said that people needed to be giving him room to be himself. And that was a sense in which they didn't want to have any more people bothering them. They just want to be left alone, especially by young people. And so the baby boomer humor grew to dominate sitcoms throughout the 1980s and then into the 90s. And I mean, it was a part of the Clint Eastwood movie and Homer Simpson spread its fame in the 1992 episode of the suburban satire of The Simpsons, his cartoon father Abraham Simpson expresses similar pointless rage in the mean, where the old man yells at clouds because we're losing control. And we want to keep something for ourselves. And so get off my lawn became a line that was associated with grumpy old people. That Get off my lawn is a four word Ode to grumpiness and grass turned into an enduring national punch line. And even though younger folks might not appreciate the cultural background of the line that is firmly embedded in our cultural psyche and get off my lawn is something that that we see, embodied in so many different ways. There's fences, there's higher fences, there's very high fences, there's terribly high fences. The more wealthy we get the bigger fence we want to have to keep people off our lawn. The more isolated we become in our in our backyard space where we can't see anybody else and then we're keeping everybody else off my lawn that grumpiness has become a way of understanding the elder they just are grumpy. And so what's happened seems to me because the younger folks expect the elderly to always find something to yell at them about. And that's really too bad. Because that breaks down community that forms a barrier to good community. So when we are interacting with seniors, I think we need to give them room for being grumpy, but also we need to provide opportunities for laughter. because laughter is so good for our heart and for our soul. One thing that elderly people know is that we might as well laugh at the antics of others, because we're too old to do something about it. And the antics of others can be just hilarious when you see what people are trying to do in order to, to, to get ahead or to be influential or to be unique. I was reading a description of a generational issue recently, where they were describing how the certain
category of people, the demographic were, were acting. And what it did is it went through a whole series of things that really were kind of funny and hilarious, because it was saying that, well, they want to wear these jeans, in such a way that, that they're, they're torn, and this and that, and the next thing and, and they want to be unique, they want to be themselves and express themselves. But the problem is that everybody else in their age group is doing the same thing. And one begins to just laugh at how that works. So we might all laugh at the antics of others. Because really, we're too old to do anything about it. Doing some study on this one study focus told me about 20 people in their 60s and 70s. And they put them in two different groups. Now one of the groups sat quietly, they're kind of in timeout, without any reading or watching anything. And the other group watch funny videos and about 20 minutes for each of these groups. And after about 20 minutes, researchers got samples of their saliva. And they found that the group that had watched funny videos had lower cortisol levels. And now what that means is that, that they were less stressed than the group that had nothing to do and just sat there quietly. To just sit someplace quietly with nothing to do is stressful. At least it's more stressful than watching something funny. And additionally, the people in both groups took a memory test. The group that had watched the videos had a much better memory recall than the other group, though the 20 minute break had apparently helped the memory of both groups. So sitting quietly for 20 minutes might very well be what you need in order to start remembering things more clearly. But it'll be even better if you watch something funny or you're involved with something funny. More specifically that it says the group that watch funny videos improve their memory by 43%. While the other group saw a 20% improvement in their memory recall. And humor also seem to improve their learning ability. And I have no idea how they tried to measure that, or what they even mean by learning ability amongst those who are in their 70s. Since it went up by 38% in the group, that watch the funny videos, compared to a 24% improvement in the other group. Then there was a Norwegian study that followed 50,000 adults, these 50,000 adults, they started following them as they were turning 60. And they followed people for about 10 years until they were 70. And they just were taking note of how things were going for them and how were things being be there. How was their health doing, how was their their lives being enriched or not, and so on. And the study results revealed that the greater role humor played in the participants lives the greater chance of their surviving until they were 70. Adults who scored in the top quarter for humor, appreciation were 35% more likely to be alive than those in the bottom quarter. So it looks like you wanted to be in the in the group that could at least appreciate things and laugh about them. And that I think speaks a lot to what our task is also as a minister to seniors. Let's help people Have fun. It's how people laugh once in a while. Chronic Pain is common in later life. And the illustration shows where peripheral arthritis can can happen and what what
happens just becomes so painful and and you know, your knees and your wrist, your elbows, your ankles. Over the years, I've sprained my ankles each, two or three times. And now when I get up in the morning, I have to walk for a little bit before the pain goes away in the ankle, but it'll, it'll go away, but I got to get that walking going. Because otherwise, it just hurts even just to stand up. And that chronic pain can be associated with negative mood states and negative life satisfaction. It's hard to be happy about my life when I get up in the morning, and I can stand on my feet without it having me painful. And so many older people, well, they accept pain as part of their life, and they don't seek help, and they'll become severe, unbearable. And the consequences though, of chronic pain, are considerable include loneliness, social isolation, depression, just think of that, just because of pain I hurt. And therefore I become more lonely because I can't get around and because I can't get around have social isolation. And because I don't have anybody to talk to I get depressed. And because I get depressed, I have impaired functional mobility and I can't walk as well. And I'm one of those people that indeed is the elder they're bent over and they're walking with their head hanging down. All of this is due often to chronic pain, and that can make people really, really grumpy. But laughter laughter can help turn that around. Senior citizens need to have some humor in their lives because what it actually lessens chronic pain. laughter can help you get over feelings of depression and laughter even gives a person a better attitude towards social interaction so that as you're as you're living your life and you find yourself laughing and enjoying something, you'll suddenly discover you don't hurt as much anymore. Because the laughter and the good things that it helps to, to have be released the hormones that gets to be released in your body endorphins, help get get you over that pain. And so when we're ministering to seniors, we need to help them to laugh, and to be able to enjoy themselves, even if they think they're really not supposed to. Because when you're elderly, you shouldn't be happy, I just want to spend a little bit of time with, with various translations of Proverbs 17:22, because I think this is one of the wonderful verses in the book of Proverbs A cheerful heart is good medicine. But a crushed spirit dries up the bones. A cheerful heart is good medicine. You know, when you have pain and when you are suffering with that pain, if you can have a cheerful heart. The pain will not be as bad it'll be it'll be lessened but when you have a crushed spirit, the bones seem to even dry up. Another new living translation makes it a cheerful heart is good medicine. But a broken spirit saps a person's strength. So even the Scriptures, the wise Solomon as he was looking at the world around you could see that this was so this is common sense. But so often we don't. We don't accept what the Bible has to say. And don't think of it as good medicine. The Berean Study Bible puts it this way, a joyful heart is good medicine. But a broken spirit dries up the bones the New King James, a merry heart does good like medicine. But a broken spirit dries the bones. The joyful
heart the New American Standard Bible says, a joyful heart, good medicine. But a broken spirit dries up the bones or the Amplified Bible puts in a happy heart is good medicine and a joyful mind causes healing. But a broken spirit dries up the bones. You can see from this what the Scriptures are encouraging us to be
aware of cheerful heart Joyful Heart, merry heart, happy heart, joyful mind. All of these are ways of expressing the Hebrew which wants us to see that this is good medicine. This is how we can get better. This is how we can deal with that grumpiness. But the crushed spirit dries up the bones it saps a person's strength. But that means that person is they have nothing to be happy about and so they're grumpy all the time. You as a senior minister have an opportunity to be the one who generates the cheerful heart. Be sure that you keep laughter in the lives of the people to whom we minister. We'll see you next time.