May your day be Awesome!

Reasons to Laugh

My momma sent me this list of reasons to laugh:

There is a long list of attributes and benefits to laughter. Here is a sample:

Laughter and worry cannot coexist.
Laughter reduces stress, including the levels of hormones associated with stress.
Laughter enhances the immune system, and makes it function better.
Laughter stimulates physical healing.
Laughter is rejuvenating and regenerating.
Laughter relaxes muscles throughout the body.
Laughter reduces pain in both duration and intensity.
Laughter is the opposite of anger. (Mothers have long known that if their child begins to lose their temper, they can stop the process by doing something to make their child laugh.)
Laughter balances brain hemispheres--left and right--the rational and the emotional sides of the brain.
Laughter reduces blood pressure.
Laughter can alleviate the discomfort of the flu or the common cold.
Laughter is aerobic, and oxygenates the body and brain.
Laughter makes you sing better. (Lee is our Church Choir Director and there is always a lot of joking and laughter during our practices. People comment on how good our choir sings.)
Laughter is a gentle and beneficial cardiac workout.
Laughter helps you cope with the daily challenges of life.
Laughter enhances your creativity. (Mozart, one of the most prolific composers in history, had a good sense of humor and liked to joke.)
Laughter is good for relationships of all kinds.
Laughter is sexy.
Laughter opens the heart.
Laughter makes learning easier. (As a teacher and college professor, I always made it a point to evoke at least one good laugh from every class.)
Laughter gives a glimpse of freedom from the mind and the restrictions of a rational world.
Laughter is a Spiritual experience, a brief touch of Joy, which is one of the attributes of God, and which leads to another Divine attribute, Love.

Don't take your laughter to your grave.

Today I sat on a wooden church pew, in a church I don't go to, surrounded by fellow townspeople who I didn't know, as we celebrated the life of a man who I have never met.
I do know his lovely and caring wife and am blessed to count her as a friend of mine, but as I sat there and listened to others talk about a man who I had  never seen, I realized that I had missed a wonderful person.

You know what was mentioned by every single person - not that he came from a different land or that he worked hard to get his degree in a country that wasn't his home land, and then that he moved to yet another country where he took up his practice to help others, or that he married and had children who he was very proud of - or that he pushed his children to be the best that they could be - or that he loved his family very much as it grew as his children got married and added grand babies...
It wasn't that the word 'determined'  and high expectation of himself, his family and others was the name of his game.  And speaking of game, golf was his love and he taught his grandchildren to have the same love for it.

Or that the neighbourhood where he lived with his family was better for them being part of it.

It wasn't that his marriage was a true love story or that as he grew older and age started to dim his mind and he had to move into a care home,that his wife took such loving care of him every day until the end.

No, what every single person mentioned about the one thing that they will always hold in their memory of this man - the one thing no one wanted to forget -  was his laugh.

His LAUGH!

To be remembered by everyone who knows you by your laugh.  What a glorious thing to be remembered by.

Today I sat at the life celebration for a man whom I never met and I feel he made the world a better place because he laughed.  And I wish I had heard him laugh.

They say not to go to your grave with your music still in you... I say - don't go to your grave with your laugh un-laughed.
Throw back your head, slap your knee, giggle and snort but please, let your laugh be what people remember of you the most.