‘Library’ founder knows importance of laughter
SUNSET PARK — Laughter really is among the best of medicines, even for vicious and sometimes deadly diseases like cancer.
That’s the philosophy behind a new “Choose to Laugh Library” in Santa Monica, where cancer patients can browse titles like “The Guide to Laughing: Sex,” or flick on an oversized plasma TV and watch films like “Raising Arizona” and “Roxanne,” or episodes of “The Simpsons.”
Opened this past weekend in an office complex in Sunset Park, the Laugh Library is part of the Wellness Community, a now-international nonprofit organization originally founded in downtown Santa Monica 23 years ago by Harold Benjamin, whose wife was a breast cancer survivor.
People enjoying the new Laugh Library, however, have a different man to thank. He is 26-year-old Shane Rahmani, a cancer survivor and strategist for Gateway Computers, who along with two friends, founded a nonprofit organization last summer called Choose to Laugh, Inc.
Rahmani, a native of South Africa, was diagnosed with testicular cancer at age 22 while studying business at the University of Michigan. He said he learned quickly the importance of laughter as part of his healing.
“It was a difficult thing, but going through something like that at the age I did opened up a lot of doors in a lot of ways,” Rahmani said. “The reality is this illness touches a lot of people and it presents all sorts of challenges.
“A positive state of mind will bring you closer to healing.”
Ample medical data backs that up, said Michael States, clinical director at the Wellness Community for more than a decade. States said the idea is for patients to wrestle control away from the disease.
“There’s real strong research indicating that laughter both reduces stress... and potentially, therefore, increases the immune system,” States said Tuesday. “The other thing that it does... is that everybody assumes that with a diagnosis of cancer, life stops, and this dispels that myth.”
More than 50 people turned out for the Sunday opening of the Laugh Library, a comfortable room bedecked in bright oranges and pinks, with paintings adorning the walls. Among them was Pat Riker, 63, a resident of Ocean Park who two years ago lost her daughter, Debbie, to brain cancer.
“Unfortunately, Debbie passed away, but I take two looks at it: There’s one of maintaining a positive attitude and keeping up your humor, just because it maintains your day-to-day and keeps you up.
Two, is I wanted the last days of her life to be happy, and so did she, and we pulled it off,” said Riker, a project manager at the Honda corporate headquarters in Torrance.
“She stayed very upbeat right up until the day she died.”
Benjamin, the Wellness Community founder, passed away earlier this year after watching his local group expand into an international success. In Santa Monica, the Wellness Community serves nearly 1,500 individuals on an average of 11,000 visits each year, according to States.
The Wellness Community headquarters moved years ago to Washington, D.C., where the nonprofit group oversees a $1 million annual budget and 22 centers across the country, with additional ones in Tokyo and Tel Aviv. All told, the centers receive between 150,000 and 200,000 annual visits.
For Rahmani, the Wellness Community was a perfect home for the Laugh Library. He and partners Ben Blumenfeld, 26, a graphic designer for CBS, and Alexis Speed, a 26-year-old real estate broker, spent months choosing the design and colors with interior designer Ella Cottrell to make the Laugh Library feel upbeat and vibrant. Donors supplied all the materials to make the estimated $25,000 project possible.
The goal, Rahmani said, was to dispel the myths and stigmas surrounding cancer, and remind patients and their families that the disease is beatable.
“We’re young. We’re out there. We’re socially conscious. We’re doing things,” he said.
People shouldn’t just feel comfortable talking about cancer, they should feel free to make jokes about it too, Rahmani added.
“This is real and this affects people of all ages — and there is hope,” he said. “This is survivable.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 2, 2005. Read the original PDF.