Laughter

I have been sick on and off for about 10 weeks now (I have a child in creche who keeps bringing home more than his artwork), so when they say laughter is the best medicine, I will vehemently contest this.  For the physical body, at least.  For the soul, however, laughter is the bubble in the champagne, the mirror on a disco ball, the beach weather in the middle of winter (you get the drift).

I am a firm believer in seeing the funny side of almost everything.  This makes for some twisted humour, but I believe that once you can get the joke (even if you are the butt of it), you are halfway to conquering the situation.

Image: graur razvan ionut

There is nothing in life that we can truly control apart from our reaction to it.  You can't make people do what you want all the time; you can't stop crap from happening, or germs from invading your body (unless you have one of those bubble things and are prepared to live in isolation). Life happens - wonderful, crazy, unpredictable and sometimes difficult situations will happen.

I realised not that long ago, after some frustrating interactions, that if I laugh at situations, my life is automatically better, regardless of what happens around me, and I remembered a specific situation a long time ago when I was waiting for a car to move out of a parking spot.  I was indicating and positioned to take the bay, and then the car moved to go in the direction that I was facing.  While they were turning out, another man pulled into my bay.  I was totally affronted! I got out the car and said "you took my bay".   The guy looked at me and said "So?" (for those who understand South Africa geography, I'll tell you that I was in Jo'burg at the time, which will explain the attitude). 

I replied, "well, you need to move!", and he refused, so I got angry.  I got so angry that I said "You.. YOU.. are a.. a... NOT NICE PERSON!".  Then I thought to myself.. of all the colourful insults in the english language, I couldn't even get the sentence grammatically correct, nevermind think of something suitably scathing.   I started to laugh.   I don't know whether it was the fact that I was supposedly too innocent to swear at the guy even when livid, or if it was that I looked like a lunatic, but the guy apologised and moved.  

When we have disagreements with the world and things are not happening as they "should", I find that I am so much happier when I remember that if I treat life as a game, I can live as I play.  We don't have to take ourselves or our situations so seriously and in fact, I am much much happier when I give up the need to be right, or have things done my way, or try to control my environment. 

That said, I'm still sniffling at the moment and although it is my habit to be quite dramatic when I'm sick and expect some pampering (which, being the mom, I seldom get anymore), I am trying out a new way of being - I'm going to have a great attitude about the cold and be nice instead of miserable.  I will look for things to laugh at instead of being self-absorbed.  I may even enjoy some lovely social time that I may have missed by being miserable..

If that doesn't work, I might just share the gory details with the next telemarketer that asks "How are you, Mrs Chapwack?".. that's bound to get me giggling.