Laughter - We Need More of It!

You have to be at peace with yourself. I love to laugh. I think laughter can cure.
You can see it in a person's face. Around age forty, when your face has lost the glow of youth,
what you are inside starts to form on the outside. Either the lines go up or they go down.
If they go up, that's a good sign.
Elizabeth Taylor

by Skip Cohen

​Writing Sunday Morning Reflections starts an hour or two before I get out of bed. I'm a creature of habit, and my body seems to wake up around 5:30 am, and I'll start thinking about what I want to write about. This morning I found myself doing an inventory of events and friends who make me laugh. So, from jokes to all the crazy stories of things that have happened to me, I had this Alfred E. Neuman, "What me worry?" look on my face.

Lately, I've been preoccupied with aging. It's a process you can't slow down, so people either fight it or roll with it. Sheila and I seem to take turns - today, her neck's bothering her, while tomorrow, I expect it to be my back. And by Wednesday it'll be something else. I compare it to a car that's in great shape until the warranty runs out, and then little by little, it falls apart - but it never stops - it just needs more upkeep.

What keeps us running is laughter. We laugh at ourselves - we laugh at the world outside our bubble. I think we'd all agree the world has gone mad, and we can only fix and maintain our little piece of it. 

At the market yesterday, the checkout clerk asked me who I was rooting for in Super Bowl. I answered Kansas City because they had the guts not to change their name. And yes, having grown up in Cleveland, I still wear my Indians hat! 

So, what's my point today? We all need to laugh more and stop the madness of taking everything so seriously. 

I modified a quote from one of the most incredible motivational speakers I've ever heard, Ed Foreman. Over the years, I added to his line. He used to say, "Life is for laughing, loving, and living,"...and I added NOT bitching, moaning, and complaining."

Wishing everybody a day filled with laughter and so many smiles; your face hurts. Take a little time and pick out a couple of your favorite stories about events in your life that make you laugh. Everybody has them, and they're the perfect way to appreciate the past and start to build the foundation of new stories in your future. Always go for those eleven-second therapeutic hugs I always write about, but today, grab a few with people who make you laugh!

Happy Sunday...or Monday on the other side of the world.