MIRTH AND LAUGHTER ARE ALWAYS STANDING BY

Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/laughterinthefiefdomoffife.mp3

or read his story below:

Life, actually…

GLOOMY TIMES REQUIRE MIRTH AND LAUGHTER

“To laugh is to awaken.” –H.G. Wells

Dear sad and morose denizen of the harried universe,

What can I do to make you snap out of your gloom for a moment and unaccountably chuckle?

As a jester, there is not much I can accomplish in terms of changing the world or making it a better place for you. I simply don’t have the skills to shift the global axis and bid cool breezes to cross your wrinkled brow.

When I laugh, I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you. More accurately, I’m not laughing at you or with you, I’m instead laughing FOR you.

If you have trouble finding a shard of Funny during your inexplicably unpredictable journey through life, then maybe we jesters can give you a break, cut you some slack, grant you a reprieve…just by making you laugh despite yourself.

Innocent laughter is like an inexpensive bout of shock therapy. When something suddenly causes you to put on hold all despair and simply laugh out loud for reasons you cannot explain, then you’ve just experienced free treatment, no co-pay required, no appointment necessary, no distracted medical tech poking at your privates.

A good laugh at the most dismal of times can, now and then, derail you and cause you to see past the bleakness, disregard whatever up till that moment seemed utterly undisregardable.

Kind of like thinking you are streaming War and Peace but suddenly finding yourself viewing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the umpteenth time.

The jesters among us help us through the gloom. That’s what they are for. Laurel and Hardy and Belushi and Pee Wee and Abbott and Costello and Murray and Carlin and Pryor and Hope and Crosby and Silverman and Argus and Diller and the Bennys Hill and Jack, and Carson and Barney Fife and Lucy and on and on and on. These jesters have a purpose. They are not to be taken lightly.

Our jesters bring us up and out of the grind and show us how to find the ponies hidden beneath the spangled saddles.

So, if we are able to spend some time now and then in mindless mirth, we might just barely reduce the temperature of the seething planet.

We just might barely find solace long enough to form a plan of prankster battle against the grumpies surrounding us