If it feels good to laugh
How much real genuine fun do you get out of life? Do you gain reasonable satisfaction from the present? Do you look forward to the future with cheerful anticipation, rather than dwell on the past with nostalgic regret?
How optimistic are you? Do you think that, on the whole, and, taking the rough with the smooth, the world is not such a bad place after all?
If you do not get any fun out of life, there is something wrong with you. If the past beckons rather than the present and the future, you need to take a good clear look at yourself.
There are many hard and bad and evil things about our world. But if you are unable to see the good things as well as the bad, there is cloud of darkness inside your mind. You are probably living with the curtains drawn, as it were, missing all the sunshine.
Keeping healthy, and taking reasonable care of ourselves wise diet, sufficient fresh air and exercise, and enough relaxation have all to do with how often we laugh.
It is not easy to laugh when we are ill although many brave people manage even that. But how foolish to become unwell because of personal carelessness and self – indulgence. Look to your health first.
How many hours sleep do you allow yourself? There are experts who might tell you that you ought to be able to make do with three or four hours. In fact , you need as much sleep as your body requires. If you are an ordinary healthy person, your body will tell when it has had enough. When it is refreshed it will tell you when to move around and get busy. You will wake up feeling hungry and energetic.
Many of us insist on trying to squash what should take a quart of our time into a pint pot. Instead of using modern labour – saving inventions to give us more leisure and more gracious living, we go farther and do more and more in less and less time. It is mad, bad and ridiculous.
Rest means not only sleep but being able to let go whenever and wherever we can manage it. It means relaxing, not only by lying down when we can, but when waiting for a bus or an appointment. Not becoming worked up about every small detail. Not being perfectionists who expect everything to go exactly as we planned or as we want it to go.
Rest is relaxing body and mind anywhere, letting jangled nerves quieten down naturally, letting – go the unimportant and all the minor irritations of life.
When we are like this we develop a great sense of humour. We not only see things in the right proportion, but are quick to spot the funny side.
How often you laugh will depend on what you are wanting from life, and how much you are hoping to get. When we want to laugh and mean it we do not have to be too set about our ambitions.
Ambitions have to be sensible and practical enough to lie within our power of achievement. They have not got to mean everything to us. There has to be readiness to adapt and to accept compromise and compensation with good grace. To put success above all else is staking our happiness on luck, chance, and ourselves, plus a fortunate combination of circumstances. If it does not come life may turn sour.
Whether we laugh often will depend on our being able to accept whatever life brings and all it offers outside personal ambition. Carried too far, the urge to get on can make us too strained, too busy, and too tired, to have time and energy for anything else about work, worry, envy and discontent with our lot.
