The health benefits, both mental and physical, of humor are well documented. A good laugh can diffuse tension, relieve stress, and release endorphins into your system, which act as a natural mood elevator. In Norman Cousin's book, Anatomy of an Illness, Cousin's describes the regimen he followed to overcome a serious debilitating disease he was suffering from. It included large doses of laughter and humor. Published in 1976, his book has been widely accepted by the medical community.
“Now that science has helped us to overcome the awe of the unknown in nature, we are the slaves of social pressures of our own making. When called upon to act independently, we cry for patterns, systems, and authorities. If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate--in short, the emancipation from fear--then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.”
The Deleuzian philosopher Brian Massumi clearly formulated how today's capitalism has already overcome the logic of totalizing normality and adopts instead a logic of erratic excess: the more varied, and even erratic, the better. Normalcy starts to lose its hold. The regularities start to loosen, This loosening of normalcy is part of capitalism's dynamic. It's not a simple liberation. It's capitalism's own form of power. It's no longer disciplinary institutional power that defines everything, it's capitalism's power to produce variety - because markets get saturated. Produce variety and you produce a niche market. The oddest of affective tendencies are okay - as long as they pay. (...) What happens next, when the system no longer excludes the excess, but directly posits it as its driving force - as is the case when capitalism can only reproduce itself through a continual self-revolutionizing, a constant overcoming of its own limits? Then one can no longer play the game of subverting the Order from the position of its part-of-no-part, since the Order has already internalized its own permanent subversion.
You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere, and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth. And as you grew up, you sought love, anywhere you could find it, whether it was a teacher or a coach or a friend or a friend's parents. You sought those tiny droplets of love, basking in them when you found them. They sustained you. For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life. But really you made it because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst things life can dish out. Toughness was a faulty coping mechanism you devised to get by. But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you. That is what has gotten you by.
“You have to make a lot of plays to overcome a lot of turnovers, and it probably doesn't happen very often in the NFL, which is why that turnover ratio seems to be so significant. When you're on the plus side, No. 1 you're getting yourself off the field defensively, limiting your exposure to bad things happening to you. And you give your offense more opportunities to make bad things happening to the opposing team. You want to play defense on the sidelines. That's the best way to play defense.”
“As he stepped forward with the guitar, the standing ovation just drove him back, ... As he stepped forward a second time, the standing ovation him drove him back again. As both Carlos Santana and Steve Miller both observed, he had tears in his eyes. B.B. himself said he was overcome. He didn't know what he had done to deserve this, and the fact remains that the white hippies from that period were running ahead of the curve. They knew what was hip.”
“[What will it take to overcome the obstacles to an ATM-like biometrics network? John Morris, president and COO of Pay By Touch, believes it will come through the marketplace. In particular, through Pay By Touch's technology, which the company says is supported by dozens of issued or pending patents.] Our patents are very broad and very deep, and we have the only patents that anybody has that are issued in this space, ... What we think we're building for, ensuring for and scaling for, is for Pay By Touch to be the method that people use for biometrics, for payments or loyalty transaction.”
“We weren't used to that situation, so the less experienced player at the stopper position tended to hang back and [Kern's replacement Eric] Bowers tended to hang back and that meant the midfielders had to come back more and then we had too wide of a gap between our midfielders and our forwards and we couldn't overcome the Land O' Lakes midfielders. So we played good defense. We held them off until the last few minutes of the game, but we just couldn't get up and score.”
The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting, exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds - all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes
I will never accept life for what it is. I don't need an easy life. My road was meant to be hard because anything worth having in this world will take me to the very edge of myself. I will overcome everything I have ever gone through and will make my future the one God intended me to have. I will pick up the pieces of this pain and sculpt it into art. I am not ordinary and never was. I walk into my birthright as a queen with her head held high. I was born to do this!