Live, Laugh, Love continued

Live Simply has been covered .. onto Laugh Often:

Laughing is cathartic, especially when it is a deep-from-your-toes-guffawing-don't-care-what-people-think kind of laugh.
Or the kind of laugh that makes your cry or want to pee your pants! (like the time I was playing hide and go seek as a kid and had to try to stifle my nervous laugh every time the seeker got close but passed on by!)

Laughing comes in many forms.
Happy laughter, nervous laughter, funny joke laughter, being torturously tickled laughter (that's my favourite kind).

Smiles and giggles are just as important too .. they are all in the same family of happy expressions. 

... but it is okay to acknowledge that we can't be happy all the time ..  Life has to have its serious moments too for there to be balance - the whole yin yang concept.  We can't have one emotion without the opposing emotion.

I once read a story to my son called "Spirit Bear" in which a troubled teen in the Northwest Territories is sentenced to solitude living on a small island in a lake.  He has a First Tribe Elder as his mentor and guardian during the period.  The Elder works on teaching him how to deal with his anger issues. 
The Elder takes the teen to the edge of the lake and gives him a stick.  He tells the boy that the stick represents his emotions - on one end is happiness and joy and the other represents his anger.  He tells the boy he should break off the anger end and throw it into the lake.  The boy follows the instructions.  The Elder points to the slightly shorter stick and says "I told you to break off the end and throw your anger into the lake" .. to which the boy retorted that he had done exactly that.  The Elder questioned him as to why then did his stick still have an angry end.  The boy snapped off the end again and tossed the symbolic anger into the lake.  But, once again, the Elder pointed to the stick and showed him his angry end had not left. 

"It will always be there" advised the Elder.  You cannot just do away with the negative emotions.  They are part of us just as much as the postive ones like happiness and love. 

It is how we deal with the anger that must be learned. 

Laugh Often . but realize that being happy, positive, uplifted cannot be had without the opposing emotions.  There will be time for the sorrow, the anger, the grumps.   That is normal and healthy. 
What one has to do is to learn how to cope when the negativite feelings are receiving more time than they are due.
Laughing - finding humour in a moment - helps to elevate one from below that fine line that divides our feelings into positive and negative.

If you can laugh at yourself then you are even one step further.  When you feel like you are behaving like a spoiled toddler - laugh at yourself.  When you feel like a fool for saying your two cents but realizing they weren't worth one  -  laugh at yourself.  No-one else might be laughing with you or others may be laughing at you .. .but as long as you are laughing .. you are at least on the right track!

Ecclesiastes 3 is often quoted - at weddings and at funerals .. because it acknowledges that "There is a time for everything":  We should LAUGH OFTEN but understand that there is also a time to weep.

Could this be why we sometimes find our emotions being released together?
We start to nervously giggle while we are holding back the tears ...
or we laugh so hard that we can't stop the tears!

Laugh Often!
especially when you discover you've just experienced a Chocolate Pudding Moment!

Wishing a CPM week to you.  Enjoy the well known passage from Ecclesiastes below:
x sun

Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

 ¹ There is a time for everything,
   and a season for every activity under the heavens:
 ² a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot,
 ³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
   a time to tear down and a time to build,
 ⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
 ⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
   a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
 ⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
   a time to keep and a time to throw away,
 ⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
   a time to be silent and a time to speak,
 ⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
   a time for war and a time for peace.