Today's
Meditation:
From
my personal experience, laughter always makes me feel
good. I do all that I can to find and do things that
promote laughter, from reading Calvin and Hobbes to watching
cartoons and comedies as often as I can. I find that
when I'm laughing, it's very difficult to focus on negative
things, and it's almost impossible to feel down in the
dumps.
I
fully believe that laughter is medicine, not just against
emotional ailments, but against physical ones, too.
There's a strong and necessary connection between our minds
and our bodies, and we very often discount the positive
effects that our mental state can have on our physical
being. If we're hungry or sick or exhausted, our
physical state definitely affects our emotional state, so
why is it that we're so willing to discount the reverse as a
possibility?
But
even apart from the potential medical benefits, laughter
just feels good, as long as it's not laughter at someone
else's mistakes or misfortune. Laughter should never
come at another person's expense--if that's what causes it,
then it's a negative thing, something that we know we can't
be proud of and that definitely cannot help us in any way.
But
it's a good feeling to get a good laugh at something that's
truly funny, and that type of feeling is one of the things
that makes life so enjoyable. It's especially powerful
when we share it with others, when we share that wonderful
feeling of enjoyment with our fellow human beings.
Sometimes
we have to search out things that make us laugh, for there
are so many things in our world that make us feel that
laughter is far away and foreign. I keep quite a few
books around of things that make me laugh, and several
television shows and movies that keep us smiling. It's
a great antidote to the often gloomy news that the world
keeps bringing us, and keeping ourselves in high spirits is
a good plan for making our lives more livable and enjoyable.
|