How long can you go without laughing?  An hour, a day, year, fifteen years? Can you stifle your giggles, can you banish your roar, can you relinquish your side splitting, eye tearing, hysteria?  You can but it sucks, take my word for it.

Control and hyper vigilance is the sworn enemy of laughter.  Don’t believe me?  Raise your hand all you control freaks, tell everyone how laughter breaks your concentration, interrupts your next move, and welcomes plan B in right before your very eyes.  It’s one thing if you’re your own control freak but when you’re trying to control others and whole situations you never get so much as a chuckle in.

And how do you think that affects a person?  It’s exhausting. You can count on gaining weight, losing sleep, becoming anxious, snapping at friends and foes alike, skin becoming pallid, hair lack luster, and on and on and on.  And sometimes you don’t even realize it’s happening, you become caught up in the muck and mire and the stress and the tears.

There are ah-ha moments and there are oh shit moments.  There is that moment in time when you realize not one picture of you shows you smiling let alone laughing.  There is that moment when you thought everything would be ok if only…this happens, and when this happens and everything is the same you are blessed to react with a gut level, head thrown back, rip snorting laugh.  From a Christmas Carol:  “Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!”

Seriously, laughter has saved me so many times over the last five years I can’t even count them anymore.  I laugh every day and I will laugh at something every day until I physically can’t laugh ever again.  You know the big can’t laugh again.

Laughing is an involuntary reaction to several things, some external some internal, for instance being tickled, humorous stories or your own thoughts.  It’s an expression of joy, it’s contagious, it can be nervous, it can be stifled but you have to been under extreme duress.

From Wikipedia: “Laughter is a part of human behavior regulated by the brain, helping humans clarify their intentions in social interaction and providing an emotional context to conversations. Laughter is used as a signal for being part of a group — it signals acceptance and positive interactions with others. Laughter is sometimes seen as contagious, and the laughter of one person can itself provoke laughter from others as a positive feedback. This may account in part for the popularity of laugh tracks in situation comedy television shows.”  Did I mention I love Wikipedia?

How many times have you heard the expression, laughter is the best medicine.  Why?  Laughter has been shown to have beneficial effects on various aspects of biochemistry. For example, laughter has been shown to lead to reductions in stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine. Laughing also releases endorphins that can relieve some physical pain.  Laughter can increase the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T-cells, leading to a stronger immune system.  Come on, a day without laughter…..can mess you up.

That said, how do you put yourself in that place where laughter indeed becomes involuntary? As Billy Joel would say, I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.  Find yourself some sinners for crying out loud (no pun intended), the imperfect people just like you who aren’t trying to control every outcome.  Positive, upbeat, been there done that folks that have come out the others side all the better for it.  Don’t take everything so seriously, my dear friend Cookie used to say it’s all about Q of L baby (quality of life for those of you not fortunate enough to have known Cookie) and he was right.  Woke my ass right up, stopped taking myself so seriously and adopted the “done is better than perfect” philosophy to boot.

The only thing I have any control over is me.  When I need a little something to boost my reactions to adversity in a more positive way I think of Anne Lamott’s definition of laughter; carbonated holiness.  I know like I know that I can never be without laughter again and my vigilance going forward will be to that end.  I am grateful for the people around me who share my love of a good laugh and even more grateful for having wept with my whole heart so I can truly appreciate it.