Tonight I am grateful for anything that makes me laugh. With the advent of the internet and YouTube, not to mention the mainstays of television and movies, I find any number of things at which I can laugh at any given moment. My son seems to find and post some of the silliest things I’ve seen on the internet. Today’s fare: goats and sheep whose bah’ing sounds like people screaming. My daughter introduced me to the “cinnamon challenge,” in which people take a dare to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon (which is essentially impossible). These poor fools choose to take the cinnamon challenge with the video camera rolling to record the many varied and often ridiculous reactions to what is likely extreme discomfort. (I have not been tempted to try the cinnamon challenge at all, let alone videotape myself doing it and then posting it on YouTube. It does make one wonder, doesn’t it?) Still, unfortunately, I find myself shaking my head and laughing at many of them.
I must admit that videos of cute babies laughing at things like tearing paper or dogs that make sounds like humans or baby elephants chasing the surf on an ocean beach have given me a great deal of pleasure over the months. I am as likely, however, to find myself chuckling at what’s happening in the book I’m listening to, or the antics of the family of squirrels that live in the tree outside my kitchen window, or the funny habits and expressions that my dog Honor has when we’re playing or she’s chewing on her bone.
Not too long ago my life was way too serious–I had suffered through dramas and traumas that sometimes made it hard to want to get up in the morning. Laughter didn’t come as easily, but I was sure grateful when it did. As life has eased up a little, I find I laugh a bit more than before and take everything a little bit less seriously. Life coach and author Martha Beck says,“The more stressful,dangerous,baffling or unpleasant your situation, the more important it is to laugh at it.” I’m not sure I ever directly used a humorous approach to whatever was troubling me, but the idea has merit.
When we laugh, our body generates a variety of responses–it causes the release all kinds of “feel good” chemicals in the brain that flood the body. The interesting thing is that the body doesn’t really distinguish between a real genuine belly laugh and a fake, pretend laugh. So I make it a practice to smile at myself in the mirror and periodically to laugh. Of course I prefer to be tickled into laughter by something genuine, but absent that, I laugh out loud as often as the idea crosses my mind. And when I fake laugh, it can be so ridiculous that it turns into genuine mirth. Like gratitude, laughter begets laughter. The more I can laugh at the many funny things that I hear and see and experience, the more there is to laugh about.
I’m grateful for the ability to find humor in a variety of circumstances. As with gratitude, when I look intentionally for things to smile and laugh about, I generally find them. When I am feeling a little blue, I have any number of resources at my disposal to help me get back on track. The key is to avail myself of them. And isn’t that true with so many things?
