June 17: Day 168

STONE ELEVEN CONTINUED
 
Laugh: I choose laughter as the notes of my song. This temporal life is a journey to be enjoyed. I look for the comedy in situations, and I learn to laugh at my own comedy of errors.

Instruction: Be around laughter.

We are drawn to people who make us laugh. Laughter is enjoyable, lightens our cares, puts us in a better mood, and helps heal our hearts and souls. Being around people who make us laugh is something that simply makes good sense. There are different forms of laughter, and some are more helpful than others. Dark humor often makes fun of other people’s disabilities, and so it is not as uplifting and healing as humor that lifts us up. Most humor helps us to relate to the familiar in a way that allows us to see ourselves in ways that encourage us to change. Laughter often pokes fun at incorrect thinking, behavior, and prejudices. We see in our own lives the comedy that is pointed out in others, and this allows us to see how to make changes that will have improvements in the way we see the world around us. Humor that uses familiarity is perhaps the most often used by sit-coms and comics. We share our lives, our reactions and responses, and the audience relates. We put ourselves on display and often show ourselves as bad examples of how to handle people and situations in hilariously poor ways. This is learning from the mistakes of others by understanding how we have made the same mistakes.

Growing up in a strict religious belief system that perhaps was too serious about life taught me how to make a point through the use of playful teasing seasoned with enough laughter to avoid getting into trouble. It wasn’t always the healthiest form of humor, and, at times, I crossed the line from humorous to hurtful. My teasing would go too far, and although I love a good laugh, I learned it wasn’t right to laugh at the expense of another’s feelings. If they weren’t laughing with me or if I was laughing at them (or even seemed to be), then I was too close to dark humor. Like most things in life, humor can be distorted, and we want to avoid that. Overall, we can allow humor to be the notes of our song. We can enjoy life, look for the comedy in situations, learn to laugh at ourselves, and be a part of healthy humor that heals our lives and our world. Sometimes we meet people that we don’t think have a serious side to their life. They laugh easily and readily. There have been times when I have shied away from some of those individuals, but I wonder now if that was a mistake. I would think we would benefit from people who have a great sense of humor.

Today’s Assignment is to take a moment to consider if you’ve avoided people because of their sense of humor. Could you benefit from their friendship? Could their lives and influence help you to enjoy life more, and could they also help you to develop more laughter and joy?