Dear Caminoheads,

In these musings on joy and happiness, other thoughts have come to me and if you are willing to, I would love to discuss with you too…  One of them is “good humor”.

Have you ever thought how you would define “good humor”? Is it an emotion? Is it a feeling? Is is a state of the mind?… The thing is that ages ago, in the middle of pandemics, wars, famines, when someone was “healthy”, it was said this person had “good humor”… had something innate that kept them healthy in a world that was falling apart… and it was supposed that whatever was that they had, was circulating in the blood, still there are some fluids in the body that are called “humor”, like the “aqueous humor” which is the fluid in the eye that keeps the eyeball maintain its shape.

These days, that we know so much about neurotransmitters, endorphins, oxytocin, dopamine, antibodies, interleukins, and other difficult names, probably we could confirm that what kept those folks “healthy” in such difficult times was indeed in their humors, and in fact, their humors was a good one… Are you following me?

Now… how do we make our humor be good? I have a few thoughts that I believe we can unravel in the next days… today, I will share a fun fact from Pope Francis,  you can find it in the Netflix documentary “Pope Francis: a man of his word”.

In the final close-up interview, Pope Francis summarizes what he believes will help us move into the future, despite the fears and disappointments. Almost mischievous, he says : “We have to smile and laugh”, and admits that every day after his morning prayers, he recites Saint Thomas More’s “Prayer for Good Humor”:

I am a firm believer that Phil understood this thing about the “good humor” more than perfectly…

Alperfect good humor loves,

Cris