12/17/2024
Sensei says:
Laughter
Laughter is an expression of emotion, either as pleasure or nervousness. My grandfather used to say, “If you laughed today, it was a good day.”
I consider laughter to be a vacation. I enjoy laughing and sometimes I laugh too loud. My relationship with my father had been based on laughter, all my childhood I listened to his humorous jokes and stories. I knew his jokes so well, when we spoke, parts of our conversation were done in only punch lines. At his funeral, I spoke about this and had the entire room laughing.
Laughter is considered the best medicine when sick, but can also injure when done at the expense of others. There is one person in our lives we should be willing to laugh at, Sara Duncan put it best when she said, “one loses so many laughs when not laughing at oneself.”
Many talented people have made a career of generating humor. The amount of laughter that can arise from an audience is an excellent gauge of quality entertainment.
Like its counterpart, crying, laughter can be a tremendous release of tension, and like crying, if you do it to excess it will become tiresome to your friends.
We laugh at the humorous predicaments of others, we laugh at good jokes and bad ones, or when we’re happy or surprised, laughter can be expressions of joy or contentment. There are many different versions of a laugh, such as a chuckle, chortle, guffaw, roar, giggle, snicker, titter; you can have a hearty laugh, or just smile (a grin is a smile showing teeth).
We can be laughed at, we can laugh up our sleeves, we can laugh on the other side of our face, we can have the last laugh, we can laugh out loud, roll on the floor laughing, or be a laughing stock, or one can laugh to scorn.
The definition of a laugh sounds quite serious; to express emotion with an audible vocal expulsion of air from the lungs that can range from a loud burst of sound, to a series of chuckles and is usually accompanied by characteristic facial and body movements. I think a better way to define a laugh is to evoke one. Someone asked Bob Hope, “who would want to live to be 100?” His reply was,”someone who is 99.”
The Koran says, “he deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh.” We’re in good company when we laugh, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox put it, “laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone…”
No matter how you express it, loudly or softly, alone or with others, laughter is worth the trip.
Have a merry laugh filled Christmas and happy new year. Happy Hanukkah.and happy Kwanzaa.
