By Daniel Hooker
It’s Father’s Day. I remember being a father and why I tell dad jokes, and tell humorous stories.
I studied psychology as an 18-year old in London, and worked/lived at an unfunded halfway house, called Cope House. There, I manned a Help/Suicide hotline two days a week, where humor and sharing stories was a way of coping with abandonment, abuse, neglect, and of dealing with the frailties of life without connection in communities.
Creating community through love, humor, and compassionate actions has been my thing for as long as I can remember. After having several traumatic brain injuries, some caused by anesthesia and some from concussions, memories and skills such as math, science, and language disappeared. To be replaced by depression, cancer, heart disease, and, soon to follow, displacement and homelessness.
Having studied psychology, and knowing from my experience how I have healed up from death sentences placed upon me by the medical industry and supported by Big Pharma, I made choices to rebuild my memories and neuropathways by telling jokes and humorous stories, which help the brain’s neuroplasticity, creating new bridges.
As we get older, all of us need the following as a daily regimen of joyous practice:
- Meditation
- Jokes
- Memorizing and singing songs that make you happy
- And most of all … participating in community in ways that make you connected to others in a positive way!
This last one is the most helpful, because community becomes the healthy family that some of us lacked growing up. From this disconnect, disharmonizing, destructive, self-annihilistic bad behaviors arise, causing mental and physical illness and disease.
My ex-wife used to say, “Danny, you were born under a Dark Star,” and I disagree!
When I shared the news that I had pancreatic cancer, my son Jay said to me, “Pops, what are you worried about? You’ve helped others get well from cancer.” And so I had, that and heart disease (which I had experienced first-hand, so I could, once again, help others heal). I am 19 years well today!
Humor, laughter, love, and compassion – you are not separate from your cells. Each and every cell in your body is reflecting your emotional state. Re-member your mind/body connection. Re-member your community and reconnect, especially now! What better time!
Two jokes I’ll share for this article’s closing.
COVID joke #1.
We’ve been isolating and quarantining for sooo long – I’m stuck with inside jokes.
When is a father’s joke a dad joke?
When it’s a parent!
