Category: Everything Else

The most wasted of all days 

is one without laughter.

 ~e.e. cummings

I’ve just finished Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, and while I’m sure there are MANY things I’m going to come back to from that book, there was one sentence that jumped out at me and screamed for immediate attention.

A small child typically laughs more than four hundred times each day, and an adult- seventeen times. I wondered if I hit even that number most days.

Ok, that’s two sentences, so sue me. Anyway, it’s TRUE. I don’t laugh enough. My husband really doesn’t laugh enough. How many times have you laughed today? When was the last time that you laughed so hard that you cried, that your face and abs hurt the next day from all that laughing?

Meanwhile, looking through my photographs, I can see that my kids’ natural inclination is to be silly, to laugh, to try to make me, behind the camera, laugh. God help me, how many times have I been in a hurry, and the kids have done something to make each other laugh, and I’ve told them now is not the time? Or “that’s not funny?” Or “how about a NICE smile for the camera?”

Guess how many pictures I have of myself laughing, or even really smiling? None.

Do me a favor: laugh today. Let your kids tell you a stupid joke, and laugh like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard. Do a silly dance and laugh at yourself. Take a picture of your funniest face and upload it to Facebook- share the laughter. I couldn’t be more serious about this– in a lighthearted way, of course.

Laugh, love, live. We know we should, why don’t we do it more?

To send you on your merry way, two things Cass said recently that made me stop whatever “important” thing I was doing to laugh.

First, I was arguing with Jake about something, and he had an excuse, and I said that “wasn’t relevant.” Cass giggled to herself and I asked her why: “Relephant. A rat and an elephant.” Mind, I say relevant a LOT, so ten times a day Cass is sitting there wondering why I’m always talking about rat elephants.

Second, remember that stupid knock-knock joke where banana is repeatedly at the door, and then the punchline is “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” Cass recently told a version where she fell all over herself delivering “Flamingo you glad I didn’t say monkey?” This phrase all by itself make me laugh as I type it.

And now, the quote gallery, because I just had to.

Laughter is an orgasm triggered by the intercourse of sense and nonsense.  
~Author Unknown

The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.
~Shirley MacLaine

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
~Jean Houston

I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, “Ain’t that the truth.”  
~Quincy Jones

A man isn’t poor if he can still laugh.  
~Raymond Hitchcock

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
 ~Thomas Carlyle

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
~Abraham Lincoln

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.  
~Victor Hugo

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
~William Saroyan

A smile starts on the lips, 
A grin spreads to the eyes, 
A chuckle comes from the belly; 
But a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, 
Overflows, and bubbles all around.
~Carolyn Birmingham

Laughter is much more important than applause. Applause is almost a duty. Laughter is a reward. 
~Carol Channing

Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of your heart.
~Mort Walker

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.
~Wayne Dyer

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that. 
~Linda Ellerbee

If I have caused just one person to wipe away a tear of laughter, that’s my reward.
~Victor Borge

You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. 
You grow old because you stop laughing.
~Michael Pritchard

Your thoughts?
Do you laugh enough? Did any of these quotes speak to you? What’s the funniest thing you’ve heard lately?

**Gretchen Rubin link is an affiliate link, which means if you buy it I get a few cents. I am telling you this to keep the FTC happy. Your local library probably has it for free (unless you go to my library, in which case I still have it, five days overdue, sorry!). It’s a great, easy, thought-provoking read. You should check it out.**

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?  

-Friedrich Nietzsche

All our fat, jolly snowmen have lost their pebble eyes, their carrot noses; they are melting down into abstract, graceful, dancing forms that I find lovely and romantic.

Particularly because on the other, sunny side of the yard, the snow is gone, the bulbs have begun to poke through, the snowdrops nod in the breeze.

All the beautiful austerity of winter and the promise of spring, and the knowledge that in another few days the rains will come and wash it all away.

It was a good winter. But I am ready for the explosion of spring, the buzzing of insects, the return of the birds. It’s a nice feeling, watching the dance of the seasons, sitting contentedly between appreciative contemplation of the past and the anticipation of joys to come.

“When will it be summer?” asked the Flower, and she repeated this question each time a new sunbeam made its way down to her. But the summer was yet far distant. The snow still lay upon the ground, and there was a coat of ice on the water every night.“What a long time it takes! what a long time it takes!” said the Flower. “I feel a stirring and striving within me; I must stretch myself, I must unlock the door, I must get out, and must nod a good morning to the summer, and what a happy time that will be!”

And the Flower stirred and stretched itself within the thin rind which the water had softened from without, and the snow and the earth had warmed, and the Sunbeam had knocked at; and it shot forth under the snow with a greenish-white blossom on a green stalk, with narrow thick leaves, which seemed to want to protect it. The snow was cold, but was pierced by the Sunbeam, therefore it was easy to get through it, and now the Sunbeam came with greater strength than before.

“Welcome, welcome!” sang and sounded every ray, and the Flower lifted itself up over the snow into the brighter world. The Sunbeams caressed and kissed it, so that it opened altogether, white as snow, and ornamented with green stripes. It bent its head in joy and humility.

“Beautiful Flower!” said the Sunbeams, “how graceful and delicate you are! You are the first, you are the only one! You are our love! You are the bell that rings out for summer, beautiful summer, over country and town.

I came home yesterday from a weekend away, and my husband immediately grabbed my arm. “I have a present for you,” he said, and guided me outside to see the snowdrops, knowing that this would make me happier than any store-bought trinket.

No, he didn’t plant them, they were here when we moved in. But knowing how delighted I would be, to lie in wait for me to walk through the door so that he could show me right away– well, I suppose this is why I married the man.

And so the emergence of the snowdrops make me doubly happy this year. Who would have believed such a thing to be possible?