Chapter 1 Excerpt - Laughter Helps You Enjoy Life More

Laughter Helps You Enjoy Life More

" The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness." --Milan Kundera

Laughing couples don’t worry as much as serious ones, and as a result, they enjoy life much more. They look for humor in most situations, and that humor provides them with laughter. The laughter makes their circumstances seem less serious and therefore tolerable. When we can see at least some aspect of the silly or ridiculous in what we’re doing, we find a solution more easily, or, at least, we buckle down for the ride with less fear and resentment.

Mary and Norman were a couple who could laugh in serious situations. Not long after they were married, they went off on a sailing adventure in the Caribbean. They were fairly new at sailing and had no experience in handling ocean storms. A squall surprised them on a day that had dawned bright and sunny. During the storm, their sails were torn, and they suddenly found themselves staring danger in the face.

While Norman struggled to get the sails down, Mary handled the wheel. She had to steer the boat away from the wind to protect Norman from the wild, snapping lines that could knock him unconscious. To do so, she had to aim for shore. As they moved closer to the rocks, Mary’s fear caused her to start laughing. She was pretty sure they were going to die, and it seemed like she was going to go crazy as well. Fortunately, neither catastrophe happened since they were able to get the sails down at last.

Later, as they motored to a safe harbor, exhausted and wet to the bone, they laughed and joked about their brush with disaster. They also laughed at how they would look limping into the marina with tattered sails. Laughing at the humor they found in the situation kept them from being irritable with one another and saved them from ending their vacation on a bad note. Instead, they saw it as an adventure to remember with a smile and a touch of pride that they had met Nature on her own terms and survived.