My inheritance is priceless, because I was given my mother’s ability to laugh. There’s a certain duality about her laughter I carry: some days it shows itself as a curse and other days, most days, it’s a blessing. I have countless memories which have morphed into one huge warm recollection of my mum laughing when she most definitely shouldn’t be – loud too. And funnily enough, I’ve turned out the same.
It doesn’t matter where I am, who I’m with, or what I’m doing, if I dare see someone trip up across the road, I will collapse on the spot and think about it fondly, forever. That’s my mum’s gift of the giggle.
Life is pretty serious; there is no denying that. But don’t deny yourself every opportunity there is to have a laugh. It’s all very well, we’re told to just care less about things and not let the stress and the strain and the struggle of it all get to you. But maybe it’s meant to get to you. And maybe you’re meant to laugh at how ridiculous it all is and how funny it is that others haven’t caught on.
If you look for it, there seems to be more bad than good that shows itself in the people you meet and the things that happen. When all those things pile up, and that one person said that one thing, and you’ve lost track of everything, and you’re broke, and it’s all there standing over you in one big serious brooding mess – deflate the power it has over you by laughing in its face.
I was such a giggly teenager, and I honestly think it was my anxiety showing through, and laughing was how I managed it. I was sent out of so many classrooms because of it, only to return 5 minutes later and burst out laughing again.
Then I got older, and things started to get serious. I forgot to laugh – how could I when I actually cared about my exams and my future? I let my anxiety get the better of me and I sat there for months as it laughed at me for the first time in my life. Then I got a little bit older and found a home away from home in a brand-new place away from all the ties of my humourless existence.
It was my first day of uni. I walked into a room that was so reminiscent of the drama classrooms back in secondary school – the ones I was told to compose myself in so often, with its black painted walls and black floor and my worst nightmare: a semi-circle of chairs waiting to be sat in. I knew what was coming, icebreakers and introductions. I felt my heart sink and my anxiety rise.
Soon, the room was full of equally as nervous students meeting for the first time, and my God was it awkward. And then it was my turn to speak, and I just burst out laughing. I couldn’t fathom how seriously everyone was taking this, as if their life depended on it.
Thankfully, it was in this moment that I realised my life depends on nothing but the joy and the hilarity of it all.
I laugh at everything, everywhere, I laugh at everyone, and I laugh at myself. Because if I didn’t, I’d be an anxious ball of misery destined to roll into and over every good thing. And it’s so important to have and acknowledge good things.
Because it just gets to a point where you say you know what nah – you worry about what you look like in photos and you wonder what people think of you – all I hope is to have the most fun as possible wherever I go, that’s actually my lifelong goal. And I don’t think I could live any other way, and I’ll never pretend to be any other way – I think my face gives it away half the time.
I believe life gives you two sacred purposes: to love and to laugh. Writing that now I realise I’m basically backing those live laugh love plaques, and you know what, maybe they’re onto something.
Seek the sillier moments, where you smile with tooth and gum. In my cackle, I carry my mum’s teachings – if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. And I think that’s a pretty fun way to be – because that way the glass is always half full, it has to be.
One response to “35. The hilarity of it all.”
how lovely 🙂