{"id":1533,"date":"2013-07-21T17:50:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T21:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2013-07-21T17:50:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-21T21:50:31","slug":"laugh-often-long-and-loud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2013\/07\/21\/laugh-often-long-and-loud\/","title":{"rendered":"Laugh Often Long and Loud"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"you-have-a-friend-who-makes-you-laugh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How long can you go without laughing?\u00a0 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?\u00a0 You can but it sucks, take my word for it.<\/p>\n

Control and hyper vigilance is the sworn enemy of laughter.\u00a0 Don\u2019t believe me?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It\u2019s one thing if you\u2019re your own control freak but when you\u2019re trying to control others and whole situations you never get so much as a chuckle in.<\/p>\n

And how do you think that affects a person?\u00a0 It\u2019s 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.\u00a0 And sometimes you don\u2019t even realize it\u2019s happening, you become caught up in the muck and mire and the stress and the tears.<\/p>\n

There are ah-ha moments and there are oh shit moments.\u00a0 There is that moment in time when you realize not one picture of you shows you smiling let alone laughing.\u00a0 There is that moment when you thought everything would be ok if only\u2026this 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.\u00a0 From a Christmas Carol:\u00a0 \u201cReally, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!\u201d<\/p>\n

Seriously, laughter has saved me so many times over the last five years I can\u2019t even count them anymore.\u00a0 I laugh every day and I will laugh at something every day until I physically can\u2019t laugh ever again.\u00a0 You know the big can\u2019t laugh again.<\/p>\n

Laughing is an involuntary reaction to several things, some external some internal, for instance being tickled, humorous stories or your own thoughts.\u00a0 It\u2019s an expression of joy, it\u2019s contagious, it can be nervous, it can be stifled but you have to been under extreme duress.<\/p>\n

From Wikipedia: \u201cLaughter 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 \u2014 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.\u201d\u00a0 Did I mention I love Wikipedia?<\/p>\n

How many times have you heard the expression, laughter is the best medicine.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 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. \u00a0Laughter can increase the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T-cells, leading to a stronger immune system.\u00a0 Come on, a day without laughter\u2026..can mess you up.<\/p>\n

That said, how do you put yourself in that place where laughter indeed becomes involuntary? As Billy Joel would say, I\u2019d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.\u00a0 Find yourself some sinners for crying out loud (no pun intended), the imperfect people just like you who aren\u2019t trying to control every outcome.\u00a0 Positive, upbeat, been there done that folks that have come out the others side all the better for it.\u00a0 Don\u2019t take everything so seriously, my dear friend Cookie used to say it\u2019s all about Q of L baby (quality of life for those of you not fortunate enough to have known Cookie) and he was right.\u00a0 Woke my ass right up, stopped taking myself so seriously and adopted the \u201cdone is better than perfect\u201d philosophy to boot.<\/p>\n

The only thing I have any control over is me.\u00a0 When I need a little something to boost my reactions to adversity in a more positive way I think of Anne Lamott\u2019s definition of laughter; carbonated holiness.\u00a0 I know like I know that I can never be without laughter again and my vigilance going forward will be to that end.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How long can you go without laughing?\u00a0 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?\u00a0 You can but it sucks, take my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[281,280,282],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pause-points","tag-laugh","tag-laughing","tag-quality-of-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-oJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1536,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}