Learning to Laugh

They say laughter is the best medicine, I've heard stories of people who cured cancer with laughter and all manner of other illnesses. And in the fight against depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses, I think laughter can be one of the most powerful tools you have, A good hearty belly laugh can erase a week of sorrow. However that's easier said than done when life is the pits, you're up to your armpits in tear juice and you seem to have no reason or inclination to laugh.

Life is big fat serious business. There's work to be done, bills to be paid, and big fat responsibilies to live up to ... with dire consequences if you don't. Add mental illness to the equation and that just makes everything worse ... how do you laugh at that?

Maybe it's because I come from a family of clowns, that made it obvious to me that I needed to laugh a little bit more ... in my family, the more serious the circumstances, the more they clown around and laugh ... there's been more than once we've been asked to leave the hospital when visiting sick relatives because the clowning got a little out of hand. With them it's a feeling of "If I don't laugh I'm gonna cry ... and I'd much rather laugh" and you can always cry later.

For me the realisation of how much laughter can help came on a day,many years ago, when I was at a particulary low point. I'd been crying all day and was at the point where I was ready to take drastic measures to ease my pain. My cat was asleep on the windowsill, he'd found a nice sunny spot and had been laying there asleep for a while, I guess he was so fast asleep he forgot where he was and decided to turn over in his sleep ... and it all kind of happened in slow motion, he rolled over and fell off the windowsill, did a kind of sidways somersault as he fell ... all in slow motion it seemed ... and landed on the floor, wide awake now, with a stunned look on his face as he tried to figure out how he came to be sitting on the floor. I couldn't help it, he looked so ridiculously hilarious I burst out laughing, practically mid sob, and I laughed and laughed and laughed till my tummy ached. When I finished laughing I picked myself up off the floor and took a deep breath and I realised that whatever it was I was crying about, that had seemed so huge before, now seemed trivial.

I've experienced many similar moments since then, when things are going badly, and life is the pits, and then something makes me laugh, and all of a sudden my problems seem managable .. or at least more managable.

It's kind of my philosophy in life now, to not take things so seriously all the time, to laugh as much as I can, to find things to laugh about. And it seems to be working, life in general has been a lot more managable since I learnt how to laugh.

And, when I look back and remember all the times I cried, for most of them I can't remember why I was crying, but I still remember all the things that made me laugh.