A young girl who was writing a paper for school came to her father and asked, “Dad, what is the difference between anger and exasperation?” The father replied, “It’s mostly a matter of degree. Let me show you what I mean.”

With that the father went to the telephone and dialed a number at random. To the man who answered the phone, he said, “Hello, is Melvin there?” The man answered, “There is no one living here named Melvin. Why don`t you learn to look up numbers before you dial?”. “See,” said the father to his daughter. “That man was not a bit happy with our call. He was probably very busy with something and we annoyed him. Now watch….”

The father dialed the number again. “Hello, is Melvin there?” asked the father. “Now look here!” came the heated reply. “You just called this number and I told you that there is no Melvin here! You’ve got lot of nerve calling again!” The receiver slammed down hard. The father turned to his daughter and said, “You see, that was anger. Now I’ll show you what exasperation means.”

He dialed the same number, and when a violent voice roared, “Hello!” The father calmly said, “Hello, this is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?”

Do you appreciate the value of humor in coping with difficult situations? The Encyclopædia Britannica says concerning laughter: “One might call it a luxury reflex. Its only function seems to be to provide relief from tension. . . . The explosive exhalations of laughter seem designed to ‘puff away’ surplus tension in a kind of respiratory gymnastics.” Imagine that! Instant relief from tension! Think of the practical benefits this can bring victims of directed energy weapons harassment and psychological attacks.

Humor can brighten up even an apparently hopeless situation. Readers Digest of May 1973 relates the experience of psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, who was imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II:

“Piled on top of malnutrition, exhaustion and disease, suicidal despair was the big killer in these citadels of degradation.”

“As a psychiatrist, Frankl knew that humor was one of the soul’s best survival weapons, since it can create, if only for moments, aloofness from horror. Therefore, Frankl made a rule that once each day he and his friend must invent and tell an amusing anecdote, specifically about something which could happen after their liberation.” As Frankl observed in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, “Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.”

Doing this helped to make Frankl’s torturous experience of life in a concentration camp more endurable. The Reader’s Digest article concluded with a question worthy of our contemplation: “If humor can be used successfully against such odds, what can’t you and I do with it in daily life?”

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