Some of you will recall Norman Cousins, the eminent editor of The Saturday Review, talking about a particular room in the hospital in Houston, Texas, called “the living room.”  Any patient entering that room was under strict orders not to talk about his or her illness.  Consequently the conversation was mostly story-telling.  There was lots of laughter.  Cousins wrote of the healing power of laughter.  Some folks poked fun at his theories and referred to his conclusions as “giggling being more important than gargling.”

Now I wouldn’t suggest that you quit gargling -- but we need to laugh more.  It makes life more livable and we need to tell our stories to each other -- our living stories.  If we share our stories of the good things that are happening, it will give us the perspective we need on the bad stories.