Today’s guest post is by Darlene Finch Wright.  An extended version of this article appeared in WNC Woman.

I used to read a lot of serious literature and watch only serious movies with “significant” themes and messages – it’s no wonder that I was depressed so much of the time.  For many years now, I have watched primarily funny movies, and when I read fiction, it’s always something light.  I would never read a book of horror or watch a horror movie.  Real life has horror enough of its own.

I’ve really found that laughter is contagious.  If you hear other people laughing, even if you don’t know what they are laughing about, it can make you laugh.  There are places in India where people meet regularly just to LAUGH!  Not at anything in particular.  They just start laughing, and after awhile it becomes really genuine, because all these crazy people are standing around laughing at–NOTHING.  If you look up into the sky, even if there is nothing there, other people will look too.  Same principle here.

If you have a sense of humor and laugh easily, I will likely include you in my life.  If you are very serious and hardly ever laugh, you probably won’t be seeing much of me.  My feeling is that most people take life WAY too seriously–the way I used to.  I’m so glad I got over that.  It’s a disease!  I think taking life too seriously can BREED disease, and taking life lightly can heal.  A wise man once said, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”

I love the absurdities of life.  One of the proudest moments of my life was when I was hiking with a friend and her children.  It was early spring, and I was in the lead.  Suddenly, I stepped into mud that came up above my knees, and as I sunk in, I lost my balance and feel on my butt into the mud.  The children came up and looked at me very seriously.  I could tell that they wanted to laugh but were afraid to.  I thought it was so hilarious that I spontaneously began to laugh my head off, and in relief, they joined in.  We kept it up for several minutes, and when I could finally pull myself up out of the muck, we were just calming down.  It was hard to stay on my feet even on the non-muddy part of the path, because all I wanted to do was to roll around on the ground.  I have sometimes fallen to the floor because I was so overcome with laughter.  The rest of the hike was quite chilly for me,  because I was coated with cold mud all down my back side, but I refused to kvetch about it, because I didn’t want to spoil the mood.

I believe so much in the power of laughter that I now believe  comedians are very important people doing very important work.  They are healers, without knowing it.

I hope you  found something to laugh about today, if only YOURSELF.  We truly are funny, funny people, we human beans.

And tomorrow, or sometime soon, I hope you will acquire for yourself something truly silly–like a funny toy, or a ridiculous picture, or DO something really really silly that will make people wonder about your sanity.  For some years now I have had a two-foot tall Tweety bird sitting in my passenger seat, strapped in with the safety belt, and I have gotten so much fun out of him.  People make comments about him often, and their smiles and laughs make ME feel good!  The people without a sense of humor obviously wonder about me and think I’m ridiculous because I’m a grown woman, but I don’t worry myself about them.  I draw to me the people who live in the same sphere I do, who GET me, when they see my sweet Tweety.  I don’t think I’m in my second childhood; I think the truth is that I never really left the first!

It’s such a cliche these days, but I hope you’ll get in touch with your inner child, and do something playful and silly.  Children really know how to enjoy life, BEFORE they take on the persona of the adults around them.  They can enjoy the smallest things, and they laugh so easily.  I LOVE being around children, especially little ones.  They are my kind of people. . .

Darlene Wright lives in Leicester, NC, laughing at herself and her dog and cat every chance she gets, and helping other people to laugh in whatever ways she can.   She is amassing a collection of silly toys, which she shares with others.   She enjoys visiting shut-ins or others who could use some cheering up, taking along her toys and her silliness.  She can be contacted at darlenew@buncombe.main.nc.us