High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Laugh’

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There they stand, nonchalant as can be, right on the shimmering edge of spillway, fa-la-laing in the cold air.

“But they have wings,” you say, as if that explained their ease.

“And you don’t?” I challenge.  “What are wings but a way to rise above things?  You can do that with no more than a change of mind.”  I snap my fingers and laugh.

The geese laugh, too.  The rushing waters race across their feet as bright as Christmas.  What is there to fear?

“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful.”  ~Mahatma Gandhi

One day, an old tale goes, God was walking in His garden when He bent to peer at the waters of a beautiful, still pool and saw, for the very first time, the perfect reflection of His own face.

Immediately, He gave out a great laugh, and it rang, booming, throughout infinite space, creating worlds upon worlds as it rolled.  And that’s how the universes came to be.

That one, booming laugh still vibrates today, bountifully birthing all the shining worlds and all that fills them.   And every dancing particle partakes of God’s nature, creative and loving, and mirrors His endless joy.

Ever since I was a young child, on the 22nd of May I have picked a bouquet of wildflowers in honor of my mother’s birthday.

She’s been gone for a couple decades now, although her loving spirit is as tangible for me as ever.

The month of May was “our” month, holding both my birthday at its beginning and hers at its end, and Mother’s Day in the middle.  Not only that, but May was her middle name.

She was a woman of great compassion and bravery, a teacher of nurses, a healer of wounds.  She had a great sense of fun, a wonderful imagination, a beautiful laugh.

She loved birds and flowers and knew the names of hundreds of them.  She loved classical music, big bands, and the songs of Jerome Kern and Rogers and Hammerstein.

She read me poetry and fairy tales and took me to concerts and circuses.

We built sand castles together and combed the shores of the Great Lakes for beautiful rocks.  We camped out and traveled to the wilderness and to the ocean and to great cities.

She gave me the best of everything she knew, and I adored her.

And so, on May 22nd every year, I pick a little bouquet of wildflowers in honor of her birthday and let them carry me back through the years I was privileged to share with her and to bask in our love.

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The purpose of life is the celebration of it.

Live!
Laugh!
Love!

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As luck would have it, my floor of the building was almost deserted today.  Meetings, both off-site and on, pulled almost everyone away.

Today, of course, was the day I decided to give out the Best Laugh award.  It was a game I play with myself where, after listening to laughter throughout the day, I would pick the best one over supper.

Interestingly – and almost as if they were summoned by my intention to find amusement in the day – the only two coworkers who stopped by my office came with the express purpose of telling me charming stories about cute situations that happened on their floors.

A third coworker sent me an email about an episode of an old TV game show where a one-liner evoked laughter so contagious that it took half the show just to calm the audience back down.   I chuckled,  imagining it.  I think I may have seen that show.

As I worked, I found myself recalling the laughs of people I have loved in my life.  My dad’s laugh was a treasure, and my sons’, too.  I could hear them in my mind. But did remembered laughter count for my game?  Hmmmm.  I wasn’t sure.

Until late in the afternoon, the only actual laugh I heard was a sort of horse-like snort.  And I wasn’t going to give that one an award if it was the only one I heard all day.

Finally, when the day warmed up enough, I opened my office window.  Along with the street sounds, a soft breeze carried in the laughter of children playing in a nearby yard.  It was as free and bright as the sunshine, and I sent them an imaginary blue ribbon right then and there.  Nothing that I would hear the rest of the day, I was sure, could surpass it.  Its sweetness and purity claimed the gentle victory and won the prize.

On my way home, I stopped to see how the creek looked after our two days of rain.  It was beautiful, or course, tumbling merrily over the rocks in a singing, bubbling cascade of foamy water.  Overhead, birds called from the trees and a squirrel chattered.  The breeze rustled through the newly opened leaves.  As I listened to the music of it all, it sounded like the laughter of springtime.  “You get a prize, too,” I whispered to it.  “Oh yes, you get a prize.”

Okay.  I’ve had it with Murphy.  Tomorrow I’m giving out a Best Laugh Award.  It’s the surest cure after ol’ Murph comes dragging his accursed “everything that can go wrong will go wrong” law across your day.

Nothing horrid happened, mind you.  Just a thousand small annoyances:  Misplaced keys, misplaced cat, misplaced papers, spilled coffee, clogged plumbing, slow traffic, a forgotten lunch, computer glitches, an incessantly ringing phone  while deadlines leered from the sidelines.

I have to admit it.  Old Murphy got my goat.  By late afternoon I was one frazzled grump.  (Even happy people have their off days.)

“How on earth am I going to break this mood?” I thought as I walked through cold rain toward the grocery store.  And just then, my eyes fell on the flats of petunias.  As if to answer my question, a voice in my head recited an e e cummings line:  “The earth,” it said, “laughs in flowers.”

“Aha!  That’s it!” I said to myself.  “I’ll show old Murphy a thing or two.  Tomorrow I’m giving out a Best Laugh Award.”  I set my intention right then and there, and immediately my gloom vanished.  I thanked the petunias by taking their picture and bought a hot supper to take home.

I started to wonder who would set the best laugh loose.  Diane?  Michael?  Bob?  A stranger?  Would I hear it in person, or on the radio?  At work, or at home?  Would it roll down the hall?  Sneak through the phone lines?  Come wafting through my open window?   Would it be a throaty chuckle, a silly tee-hee, a hearty guffaw?

The Best Laugh Award is one of my favorite variations of the Best-of-the-Day game.  You can look for anything you want—most beautiful thing, best idea, best smile, best overheard comment, best billboard, best display of the color red.  You just look for the best of your chosen category all day, and then, at day’s end, pick the winner.  It’s an exercise in keeping your attention focused.  And it yields some surprising results.

So move aside Murphy.  Your law’s got nothing on me.  One display of petunias wiped out your entire bag of tricks.  The best laugh today is the one I got on you!

As I walked along the dry edges of the creek snapping photos, I found myself wondering what aspect of happiness I would write about tonight.  Then I looked down and laughed.

Right in front of me a heart shaped piece of blue, water-buffed glass rested on the rocks.  “Love; Rocks,” my brain labeled the scene.

Synchronicities are just so cool.

“Love rocks, hey?”  I said to myself.  “Can’t argue with that.”  Especially in spring, when all the earth’s critters – even the featherless two-legged kind – have romance on the brain.

Here’s to romance!  Here’s to the force that makes the world go ‘round.  Here’s to the birds and the bees.

Here’s to love’s toughness and strength, to its tenderness and generosity.  Here’s to the way it opens us up, letting us see the world through each other’s eyes.  Love rocks.

Love lifts us and comfort us.  It nurtures and corrects.  It forgives and heals us and inspires us to reach for our very highest selves.

Love lets us see the best in each other, and in ourselves.  It lets us tolerate each other  when we’re not too sure we like each other’s quirks and shortcomings.  “We like each other because,” the saying goes; “We love each other anyway.”  Love rocks.

Love delights and sparkles our lives.  It gives them depth and meaning.  It turns strangers into neighbors, and neighbors into friends, and friends into families and communities. It connects.  It supports.  It builds.

Love is the highest, truest thing we know, the most universal, the very stuff from which everything is made, the essence of life.  It sings itself through all that is.  It transcends time and space.

Love is in every gentle touch, every laugh, every smile, every word of gratitude and kindness, every gesture of giving.  It’s the basis for every virtue.  It’s what gives us courage and gives life zest.  Love rocks.

Open your spigots and let love flow.  Pour yourself a mug of it.  Splash some around.
The more of it you give away, the more of it you get.  And that is its miracle and magic.

Love rocks.

I set out to see what the lake was doing, now that winter was making such a sudden exit. Turned out it was holding a laugh-fest for Canadian geese.  A couple dozen of them were gathered, padding across the lake’s still frozen surface on their big webbed feet like so many clowns. “Look!” they honked at each other, “I’m walking on water!”

At once stunningly beautiful and hilarious, they made me laugh out loud.  I remembered a Zen tale I’d once heard about a monk who laughed watching chickens eat and totally understood.  Oh, the sheer exuberance in living, the wild, untrammeled joy these creatures embodied!

Just watching them was a life lesson.  No stories, no fears, no projections hampered their happiness.  They took the moment for what it was and made the absolute most of it.

“Go and do likewise,” I thought.

Two weeks ago I drove to Cleveland in a blizzard.  Imagine my surprise when I pulled in the parking lot of my motel and discovered I had come to a rest directly in front of a cherry tree packed with over two dozen robins.  The little fellah in the photo must have thought he had arrived in a heaven made of cherry vanilla ice cream.

Robins are the harbingers of hope in these parts, one of the first songbirds to return after the long, silent winter.   They’re symbols of happiness with their call, “Cherrily-cheerily! Cheer up!”   The joy they bring is celebrated in an old song that’s been a traditional part of my springtime ever since I was a little kid listening to my parents sing it.  It’s called, “When the Red, Red Robin Goes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along.”

You can catch a heartfelt version of it here on you tube, backed up by some excellent guitar playing.  Give it a listen, and tuck the lyrics in your pocket to sing to yourself in the morning.

“Wake up, wake up, you sleepy head;
Get up, get up, get out of bed.
Cheer up, cheer up – the sun is red.
Live, love, laugh and be happy.”