“Life is what happens to you when while you’re busy making other plans”- John Lennon
He is a travelling automobile employee. He lives in California- sorry, exists. He is too preoccupied with this work. He exists to meet his commitments. He has no other activity but to see the walls of his mundane where he works, an old mug occasionally filled with coffee, and the papers and his buzzing monitor. His vocabulary has just 4 phrases: “Good Morning/ Evening” “How are you doing? Am fine” “No, Thanks” “Yes, I live alone”. His eyes look sunken and dead, skin tailored to his bones. He becomes insomniac over time. He does not know why he does what he does- Depression.
So now, who is this “he” I am talking about? That is well, an obvious question. My answer would be: Most of us living in this humdrum tune of life spend at least 3/4th our day the way “he” spends!
But in essence I was inspired to quote this, “He” from a nameless protagonist of a Hollywood movie- Fight Club (Edward Norton). That movie evinces a typical man’s inner clashes between “What I want!” and “What I have!”
This has total relevance to why we have become what we have become today! We wake up – we finish our chores- we eat in silence, maybe alone- we move to work- we work- we work-we come back- finish our chores- we sleep a wretched sleep- we move! This, in short, summarizes most of us and our life. We say we need to reach heights, be the best in what we do and thrive for it! We keep working towards it, a good thing to do- no doubt, but we just work and work- there is not an ounce of enjoyment, a time together to laugh and be merry. Life has been woven to that complexity by us!
“Laugh out!” is one of the most common phrases we use- and we never take time for that. It is a natural way to stimulate yourself- something glucose or 1st mark in physics can’t do, because it works psychologically not with our ever-thirsty brain! We never have time for that, and if we do we resort to really unglamorous techniques to evoke laughter- like laughter therapy, or trying put fingers at the corners of the mouth and making a pathetic “smiling” face!
In short, we do not know what a simple smile does, or how relieved it is after a good old laugh. Patch Adams is a guy who went to mental institute (as a patient) because of his depression, and when he developed a positive outlook towards life, it was unbelievable, he came out laughing! He is now influencing many people whose lives are ruled by stress and monotony.
Laughter is known to cure us- it is true- studies say that it boosts our immunity by multiplying the NK cells (natural killer cells) produced in the lymphoid organs. It multiplies the Vitamin C production in our body too. Humour has been known to enhance the adrenalin secretion in our body- you feel young, trust me! Â 🙂
They work with our neurons, hormones, our tinkering mind and whatnot- “It’s real biology” says Dr.Berk who works on Humor Therapy. It has even known to cure deadly diseases like cancer but reliable results haven’t been found yet- it may sound far- fetched, but research is going on!
But let’s not get into mind- blogging aspects of laughing. It is very simple to attract laughter to us, it actually purifies our inner mind and senses too. All we have to do is take our time- with our family, with our friends and remove “work” at that time and our egos out of the equation. Take time for light- heartedness, whatever we like to do makes us smile and that’s what we ultimately want- a movie, book or even an “up-and-down” on a see- saw. If you want to be young, go back to what you did- not what you do!
Fun and frolic= laughter- tension: and that’s our goal! As Lennon says, “We plan something big, we look back and life is gone!” We should never happen to regret what we lived but look back and say, “Yes, that was some 100 years” even with all the problems and misgivings we had!
After all, life is short! It’s our right and responsibility to make it sweet, sweeter with smile and sweetest with laughter! 🙂