Happy Allen Klein's Day

            Several year’s ago, I received an email from someone I had never met before. I almost didn’t open it because I didn’t recognize the address. Then, I nearly deleted it because I thought it was one of those spam emails from Nigeria. You know the kind: All I had to do was send them money, and they would transfer millions into my bank account.   
            I was especially skeptical because the first sentence read: “I’m just writing to inform you that my girlfriend and I have named a holiday after you.”  Sure, I thought. And how much will that cost me? But I read on:

“I’m hoping that you won’t be offended as it is a very nice holiday, one that symbolizes the love that we have for each other. It’s just that the day is named after you, nothing more.”

I get lots of loony email. Most are annoying but this one sounded intriguing, so I kept reading:

“Allow me to explain. My girlfriend and I work together in a business with very long hours. On our first Valentine’s Day together, we worked past midnight, and so missed the holiday. Rather than get depressed, we decided that from then on, we would celebrate the next day (February 15^th) as “Allen Klein’s Day.”

How could I not read further after being chosen for such an honor?

“Yes, I know it is sort of a pun—perhaps the lowest form of humor—but it was a pun between us, and we don’t mind laughing at puns in private. Go ahead, say the words out loud, ‘Valentine’s Day’, ‘Allen Klein’s Day.’  Get it?”

“Anyway, as the holiday named in your honor is fast approaching, I thought I’d do a quick web search to find out the true identity of its patron. And, as luck would have it, you happened to be the first—and therefore in my book, only—Allen Klein I found.”

“Honestly, sir, I know the whole thing is a bit strange, but I just figured you had a right to know if a holiday had your name on it. I wanted you to be privy to the fact that come February 15^th, two young lovers—complete strangers to you—will kiss over candlelight, raise a glass, and toast in all sincere sweetness to each other: ‘Happy Allen Klein’s Day.’”

25 Quotes on Humor

Laughter - a gift we can give ourselves and others.
by Dr. Stephanie Sarkis
Psychology Today online, January 16, 2011


Humor really is our saving grace, and it helps keep us psychologically healthy...

"Laugh as much as possible, always laugh. It's the sweetest thing one can do for oneself & one's fellow human beings." - Maya Angelou

"A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better." - Barbara Walters

"He who laughs, lasts." - Mary Pettibone Poole

"A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing." - Laura Ingalls Wilder

"There is nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face." - Eva Hoffman

"Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it." - Bill Cosby

"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road." - Henry Ward Beecher

"It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously." - Oscar Wilde

"When humor goes, there goes civilization." - Erma Bombeck

"A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life." - Hugh Sidey

"A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done" - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it." - Frank A. Clark

"No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Comedy is acting out optimism." - Robin Williams

"A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life." - William Arthur Ward
 
"Humor can alter any situation and help us cope at the very instant we are laughing." - Allen Klein

"Humor is just another defense against the universe." - Mel Brooks

"Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it." - Langston Hughes

"Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs." - Christopher Morley

"If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor." - Jennifer Jones

"Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth." - Victor Borge

"Humor is the affectionate communication of insight." - Leo Rosten

"Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you." - Langston Hughes

"Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor." - Eric Sevareid

"The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense." - Jacob August Riis

Laughter is the Key to Healing

Reprinted from Examiner.com with permission

Welcome to Kala’s Quick Five, where I chat with fascinating authors, artists, teachers and researchers and ask them five questions about their work. My guest today is Allen Klein, the world’s only Jollytologist. Allen has a masters degree in humor (from St. Mary’s College in Minnesota-and that’s no joke!) He is also an award-winning speaker and best-selling author whose first book The Healing Power of Humor is in its 36th printing and ninth foreign language translation. He has written 17 books that all focus on humor as a means to deal with everything from traffic jams to tragedies, and his writing has appeared in four editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul. His new book is: Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying: Embracing Life After Loss.

Kala: Allen, welcome to Kala's Quick Five. You teach workshops using humor to deal with changes, challenges, and stressful situations. Examples include Humor for Workplace Wellness, and Motivational Humor Presentations for Healthcare and other Professionals. How can one use humor in the workplace effectively without going too far and upsetting someone?

Allen:  You are right. Humor in the workplace can be a tricky thing, especially in today's culture and harassment issues. Still, I think it is possible to lighten up the work environment. First, stop, look, and listen for what kind of humor is acceptable where you work. What do people kid around about? What kind of humor ticks people off? Does the supervisor or the boss set a tone for appropriate humor?
Once you know some of this than you can introduce some light-hearted things everyday. For example, put up a ha-ha bulletin board where workers can post a cartoon a day, funny signs like, "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it," or their baby photos for everyone to guess who it is.  Or, you could introduce props on your desk to lighten the day like a jar of bubbles, Groucho glasses, or clown noses that can be used when meetings get too serious.

Kala: You lost your wife to a rare liver disease when she was 34. Near the end, as your wife lay dying in the hospital, you both received a lesson in the therapeutic value of humor. Tell us how you both connected and stayed strong during this time.

Allen:  My wife had a copy of Playgirl by the side of her hospital bed and suddenly opened to the male nude centerfold. She insisted that we put it up on the wall. “This is too risque for a hospital” I told her. “Nonsense” she replied, “just take a leaf from that plant over there and use it to cover up his private parts.” I did that and things were fine for the first two days but by the third day the leaf began to shrivel up and reveal more and more of what we were trying to conceal.
After this every time we saw a plant or leaf we both laughed. Our laughter may have been brief and fleeting but it brought us closer together, revived us, and helped us rise above the painful process of her terminal illness and eventual death.

Kala: You've worked as a home health aid, hospice volunteer, and director of The Life-Death Transitions Institute in San Francisco. During this time, you gathered your experiences and put them into a book, Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying: Embracing Life After Loss to help others in their journey through loss and grief.  The book is described as a compassionate guide to the bereavement process in which you share the tools and encouragement necessary for transforming loss into a passion for living life to the fullest.  What was the most powerful lesson you learned while working in hospice and assisting with transitions to the other side?

Allen:  The biggest lesson I learned from working with dying patients is that death is a natural and necessary part of life. Image, for example, that there were no death. Would you ever get anything done? Probably not because time would never run out. In addition, how would this world feed, shelter and support an ever increasing, never ending, and constant population growth?  Nature shows us with the four seasons that each one is important and how what looks like death in Winter is new growth in Spring.

Kala: Ok, Allen, what's a Jollytologist and are you the world's only one? Can others apply to join in on the fun?

Allen:  Guess what Kala? I made the word, "Jollytologist" up. Since I studied the therapeutic value of humor for years, technically I'm a "gelotologist." (Gelos is a Greek work meaning laughter.) But since most people don't know the word Gelos, I change it to Jolly. Of course, anyone can join in the fun. According to my thinking, anyone can become anything they want. Since I've coined the word "Jollytologist," others have become a Joyologist, a Happyologist, a Funologist, etc. But one word of caution...don't call yourself a "Jollytologist" because it is Trade Marked.

Kala: Death is a natural part of life that every living being will experience here on earth. What has your work taught you most about the death process and about living?

Allen: I have learned that loss can be one of our greatest teachers. In fact, I'm convinced that we need major setbacks in our life to learn about our strength, our power, and our spirituality. We human beings are funny creatures. We don't learn much when things are going well. We seem to need a nudge now and then to learn life's lessons. It is why my book, Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying, has five stages for going from loss to laughter. First we begin with Losing someone or something dear to us. Second we start Learning from that loss.  Third we can move on by Letting Go.  Then, as we put the our loss in the background, we begin Living our life once more. And finally, once we live our life fully, we start Laughing again.

Kala: Allen, thank you for joining me here on Kala's Quick Five.

******************************************************************

Enjoyed this article? Kala welcomes your comments and reads them all. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe by clicking the button at the top right corner of this article. By doing so, you'll receive e-mail updates every time a new article by Kala Ambrose is posted - and it's free! To read archived articles by Kala Ambrose, visit her main page at the National Metaphysical Spirituality Examiner.
More about Kala Ambrose: Kala Ambrose is an award winning author, wisdom teacher,  inspirational speaker and host of the Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show. Her thought-provoking interviews entice listeners to tune in around the globe! Described by her guests and listeners as discerning, empowering and inspiring, she speaks with world renowned authors, artists, teachers and researchers delving into empowering and lifestyle enhancing topics. More info at ExploreYourSpirit.com

Embracing Life After Loss

Below are the five steps for fully living life again after a loss.
They are excerpted from Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying. (ISBN  978-0-9798755-8-8)

Step One

losing

If you believe yourself unfortunate, 

because you have loved and lost, 

perish the thought. One who has 

loved truly, can never lose entirely.

                                                            –Napoleon Hill, American author

Losing a loved one is not easy. I know — I have had many losses in my life. The one that made the most impact on my life was my wife’s death when she was 34. In addition, my mother, my father, my four grandparents, my sister-in-law, several cousins, and both my mother-in-law and father-in-law have died, as well as over 40 friends and colleagues who are no longer here because of AIDS or cancer. 

I don’t think we ever forget the people we lose. So in some sense, they are never gone. But, still, it hurts not to be able to see them, hear them, or hold them again.

Loss hurts. But it can also help us be stronger, wiser, and, if nothing else, more appreciative of every moment we have on this earth.                                           

                                                            Step Two                                                              

 learning

Turn your wounds into wisdom

                                                                                 –Oprah Winfrey, American television host

Every time you lose something, you are presented with an opportunity to acquire something new. With each loss, there is a golden opportunity for a new beginning. You may not realize it right now, but your loss is part of your growth process. In fact, your loss can be seen as a gift. 

How could you possibly even think of loss as a gift? You have lost someone who was very dear to you. You have perhaps lost the one person in your life who meant everything to you. You have lost a significant part of who you were. It certainly doesn’t feel like a gift.

And yet, it is. 

Your loss is serving you. It is helping you examine who you are, why you are on this earth, and how to live your life. Among other things, your loss has given you:

–the gift of appreciating life more fully

–the gift of cleansing through mourning

–the gift of love

The best thing you can do after reading this is to open the gift.

Step Three

letting go

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes,

the greater is their power to harm us.

                                                                        –Voltaire, French philosopher

Crying is the body’s way of dealing with loss. It is unhealthy to squelch your tears. What you stifle today may come back in greater force tomorrow. But continuing to endlessly wallow in those tears is not healthy. At some point, you need to get on with your life. 

Today might be the day to take the first step, to let go, to move on.

Step Four

living

I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, 

immobilized by the gravity of my loss, 

or I can choose to rise from the pain 

and treasure the most precious 

gift I have — life itself.

                                                                        –Walter Anderson, American magazine editor

The loss of someone close to you provides an opportunity for a new beginning and an enriched life. Once you start to work through your grief process, you can begin to fill the vacuum that was created by your loss with an even fuller sense of life.  

Ultimately, in dealing with a loss, the choice is yours. No matter what the situation, you have a choice of how you react to it. You can remain in your grief and turn your face away from life or you can move on and embrace life.

Choose life.

Step Five

laughing

Tragedy and comedy are but two aspects 

of what is real, and whether we see the tragic 

or the humorous is a matter of perspective.

                                                                      –Arnold Beisser, American polio-disabled author

It may seem ludicrous putting laughter and loss in the same sentence. How can you possibly laugh after losing a loved one? Yet recent research by Dacher Keltner and George A. Bonanno shows that “the more widows and widowers laughed and smiled during the early months after their spouse’s death, the better their mental health was over the first two years of bereavement.”

Laughter is a great coping mechanism. Finding the humor in anything and laughing about it gives you a break from the pain of loss. It allows for a breath of fresh air at a time when everything seems dark and heavy.

Many of the world’s top comedians intuitively knew this when they experienced a major loss in their life. They turned to humor to cope and eventually perfected their craft and made comedy their career.

Your goal is probably not to become a stand-up comic, but you can take a lesson from these renowned comedians and use humor and laughter to help you to cope with your loss.

Laughter and humor are one of God’s gifts to overcome your trials and tribulations.

http://amzn.to/fTL7Ow 

The Big Picture

"The next time you are feeling bored, despondent or irritable, try to remember your cosmic situation; at this moment you are riding on a big round-shaped rock that is hurling through space, spinning around its own axis at about a thousand miles per hour and spinning around the sun at approximately 66,000 miles per hour. Along with our entire solar system, you are also soaring through the Milky Way galaxy at nearly 500,000 miles per hour. And what’s truly remarkable is that you don’t even have to hold on."
                                                                                                     –Wes “Scoop” Nisker, Buddhist teacher


I recently went to the planetarium in San Francisco. I saw an incredible astronomical show about the creation of our sun. I learned that the sun is actually a star and that it is the nearest star to earth. I also learned that it was created 4.6 billion years ago. And it will burn itself out in another five billion years.

Fascinating numbers, but I could not wrap my mind around them. They were talking about billions of years ago and billions of years into the future. I couldn’t even imagine what one million years would look like, let alone billions.

It made me realize what a small speck we are in the history of our vast universe. And how trivial some of the things we concern ourselves about really are. It also helped put my losses, which seem so overwhelming at the time, in perspective.

You may feel that your loss is the largest thing in the universe. In time, and with perspective, your loss will take its proper place in your life.

                                                                  Excerpt from Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying
                                                                                                                                http://amzn.to/fe5ppC

Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying

Today is a momentous occasion. My 17th book, Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying,  has been published by Goodman Beck Publishers. I am very grateful to be with them. They have not only done a great job of producing a great looking book but they are also wonderful people to work with.

In the posts to follow, I will be sharing some of the contents of the book with you. The hard part is choosing what to share. Since I'm a Broadway musical fan, I'm going to take some advice from one of the songs in The Sound of Music and "start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..."

So, here, from Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying, is part of the introduction to the book.

"I always try to balance the light with the heavy; 

a few tears of spirit, in with the sequins and the fringes."

-Bette Midler, American entertainer

                                                        dear reader

While this book comes out of the lessons I’ve learned about loss from the death of my wife, the thoughts within address all kinds of loss. The feelings that often accompany the loss of a loved one also applies to such things as losing a pet, getting a divorce, being let go from a job, or any other major setback in your life. Any loss can be overwhelming. The aim of this book is to help you realize that loss is part of life, that it can be one of our greatest teachers, and that, in spite of your loss, you can once again fully partake in what life has to offer

When my wife died at the age of thirty-four, I didn’t need a book that tried to explain the complexities of grief. I didn’t need a book that spoke to my head. I needed a book that would offer a few comforting words and speak to my heart. It is what I hope this book will do for you.

With simple words and simple, yet profound, ideas, I hope that it will provide comforting heartfelt thoughts and a lighter tone not found in other books on loss.

I also hope that it will show you that there can be a positive side to loss and help you understand that, although your loss is a life-changing experience, it need not necessarily be a negative one. And because of life’s brevity, that a loss can be a powerful wake-up call to celebrate life.

Please note that I am not advocating avoiding the grief caused by loss or rushing through it. Unexpressed grief can come back again with a stronger force. It is important to fully deal with the grieving process after a loss.

However, my intention in writing this book is to help you go beyond your loss to embracing life fully again, and, yes, even laughing again. And, to help you go from merely surviving to thriving. Also, I hope that it will uplift your spirit, touch your heart, and nourish your soul.

(P.S.- If you enjoy reading the blog, please tell your friends to follow it for many more excerpts from the book. They can sign up at: http://allenklein.blogspot.com/)

http://bit.ly/eN13lx

 

 

Major Mini-Miracles

Over the past seventeen years, Gramercy Books (a division of Random House) has published a number of my quotation books. The gift-type books did really well for them with sales of over 400,000 copies. Then, about two- years ago Random House closed the doors to that division. I managed to get the rights back to the books but I had difficulty selling them to other publishers in spite of their track record.

For over a year I sent copies to publishers without any success. I became discouraged. I gave up actively looking for a publisher and put a sign above my desk that read, “The Perfect Publisher Will Find Me.”

Then, one day, I got a notice from the Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association, of which I used to be a member. They were having Peter Shankman at their next meeting. I had been following Peter, a

social media guru, for a long time and wanted to hear him speak.

At the event, I took a seat on the aisle. The man next to me was turned around and chatting with two women behind him. He was trying to sell them his idea for a book. They weren’t interested because, as I overheard, they were starting a new division of their company and looking for books that uplift, inspire, enlighten, and bring joy to readers.

When I heard that, I immediately introduced myself to the two women and told them how well my books fit within their mission. They gave me their card and asked me to send them the books. When I saw where their office was located, I knew I found the perfect publisher. They were only five blocks away from where I lived. So I hand-delivered the books the next day and the rest is history.

The publisher was Viva Editions. They have published two of the books, Change Your Life! A Little Book of Big Ideas, and, Inspiration for a Lifetime: Words of Wisdom, Delight, and Possibility. They do a remarkable job of not only producing stunning books but also getting the word out and selling the book. For example, Change Your Life! is in Hallmark stores across the county.

I am so grateful to be working with Viva Edition. And, I’m grateful to NCBPMA for providing the space for the perfect publisher to find me.

Allen Klein,

San Francisco

www.allenklein.com

P.S.- “And now,” as Paul Harvey used to say, “for the rest of the story.”

Shortly after I signed the contract with Viva, they moved their offices to Berkeley. At the opening party, a woman came up to me and said that she was the owner of Viva Edition and that she was delighted to have me as one of their authors. She also told me that she now lives in London, and that she knows me. Since I didn’t know her, I asked how she knew me. She said that for thirteen years she lived across the street from me and saw me walking my dog everyday.