"Laughter is inner jogging"
About this Quote
“Laughter is inner jogging” is one of those mid-century American metaphors that sounds almost cute until you notice the agenda hiding in its sneakers. Norman Cousins wasn’t selling a punchline; he was selling a theory of the self: that emotional life can be managed like a fitness routine, and that joy can be prescribed with the same brisk certainty as a morning run.
The intent is practical, even evangelical. “Inner” makes laughter private and portable, something you can generate without permission from the world. “Jogging” reframes it as disciplined, repeatable, and health-forward. It’s not the messy, involuntary laughter that interrupts a room; it’s laughter as a regimen. The subtext is classic self-help optimism with a cultural edge: your body isn’t just a vessel that suffers; it’s a system you can hack. That pitch lands especially well in a society increasingly fluent in wellness metrics and suspicious of idleness. If jogging is morally approved exertion, then laughter becomes a socially acceptable pleasure with measurable payoff.
Context matters: Cousins is closely associated with the late-20th-century turn toward mind-body medicine and the belief that attitude can materially affect health outcomes. The line compresses that worldview into a single, memorable image. It works because it recruits a familiar secular virtue (exercise) to legitimize an undervalued human function (play). The metaphor flatters the listener, too: you’re not slacking off; you’re training.
The intent is practical, even evangelical. “Inner” makes laughter private and portable, something you can generate without permission from the world. “Jogging” reframes it as disciplined, repeatable, and health-forward. It’s not the messy, involuntary laughter that interrupts a room; it’s laughter as a regimen. The subtext is classic self-help optimism with a cultural edge: your body isn’t just a vessel that suffers; it’s a system you can hack. That pitch lands especially well in a society increasingly fluent in wellness metrics and suspicious of idleness. If jogging is morally approved exertion, then laughter becomes a socially acceptable pleasure with measurable payoff.
Context matters: Cousins is closely associated with the late-20th-century turn toward mind-body medicine and the belief that attitude can materially affect health outcomes. The line compresses that worldview into a single, memorable image. It works because it recruits a familiar secular virtue (exercise) to legitimize an undervalued human function (play). The metaphor flatters the listener, too: you’re not slacking off; you’re training.
Quote Details
| Topic | Joy |
|---|
More Quotes by Norman
Add to List
