Losing our joy?
A couple weeks ago ESPN has their yearly fundraiser for the V Foundation. During which they replay Jimmy Valvano’s acceptance speech from March 4, 1993 ESPY’s (transcript and video) where he accepted the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award and announce the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research (he passed April 28, 1993 from cancer).
In his speech he said "To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special."
We certainly know the saying "Laughter is the Best Medicine" and it has even been researched. However I was thinking about that and I was trying to remember the last time I really, truly laughed, or even heard another adult really laugh? You know what I mean…lost it with tears or milk through the nose or something like that. Certainly I type and see others type LOL in twitter, IM, email, etc. but to be honest we don’t really Laugh Out Loud, it might be a smile or chuckle or a smirk or even an occasional "Ha" (like when I saw Joker’s disappearing pencil trick 
). I’m not saying we’re depressed or aren’t enjoying our lives, jobs, families, but there’s a different between a smirk and an all out guffaw. Perhaps it’s just that the humor today is either sexual, predictable or so dry it borders on sarcasm. Or perhaps we’re just becoming too serious/jaded. Or maybe it’s just me.
So when was the last time you really, truly laughed? Heck when was the last time you even saw someone smiling in their car?
I LOL a lot
The older I get the more I realize it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks of me. I laugh in the car. I practice talks in the car – I probably look like a crazy guy if someone drives past me.
The key is to not givie a $hit what others think. Enjoy life
Last time I laughed out loud? When my colleagues showed me the fail blog.
But I will agree – the older and more jaded I get, the less things really strike me as funny in the same way.
My kids make me laugh all the time…and cry (did I say that). They send me through the emotional tornado and the things they say are just hilarious. The amount of information they can absorb is insane and the comments that they make sometimes just catch you by surprise that you cannot help laughing.