I can’t help but smile when I hear the honest, full-body, joyful laughter of children.  You can be in a black mood, stressed by a looming deadline, a term paper or just life in general but all of that melts away with the joyful strains of laughter.

The trick I find is to want to join the club, the laughing club.  I have a very serious demeanour that does not lend itself to outright belly laughter but despite that, I love to laugh.  I love what it does to me, how it discombobulates me, how it heats my blood and makes me feel alive.

I don’t always embrace laughter outright.  It seems that the corner of my mouth has to lead the charge despite my best efforts to fight it.  I crack a Mona Lisa-esque smile, then by a power greater than that which I can resist, loosen the rest of my mouth and crack an even bigger smile, allowing those close to me to notice that I am actually smiling.  It is like a wave, a tsunami. From my smile the power of laughter reaches my eyes then my brain, releasing the final vestiges of seriousness and erupts through my mouth as beautiful, healing laughter.

At times I feel spent, need to wipe my tears or have to apologize to those close to me for having a moment so fantastic that I have interrupted their own seriousness.  Some embrace the laughter and join the club, others turn away encapsulated in their humourless realities.

I am no delicate thing and accordingly neither is my laughter.  It is a discordant sound but beautiful in its own right.  It can’t be missed, loud, booming, refreshing and singular.

It acts as a breath of fresh air, relieving my stress, freeing me of my black mood and allows me to continue forward powered by the positive energy of laughter.

Audio tracks of laughter and a video to start you off.

http://soundbible.com/tags-laugh.html        http://bit.ly/1n9YgNs