Laughter.
I’ve always been fascinated with the universal traits of humanity. Things that are timeless, that cross the boundaries of culture, race, religion and gender. These are the things that truly define our humanity, because these are the things that are most human.
I’ve never known anybody who didn’t cry, and I’ve also never known anybody who didn’t laugh.
Hopefully, we laugh a lot more than we cry.
It’s been kind of a tough week in our house. Nothing earth shattering, nothing catastrophic, but it’s amazing how sometimes the weight of the simple every day can drag you down and leave you bruised, battered, broken and bleeding on the figurative highway of life.
But in the midst of what has been a long and tiring week, I heard a sound last night that stopped me, almost made me want to cry, and filled me with a profound sense of relief.
She was laughing.
I’m probably going to get into trouble for this part, but my wife has two kinds of laughter. There’s the normal everyday laughter at something she finds funny, and then there’s something that truly gets her going, something that takes her out of the realm of the normal and into a mode of laughter that is punctuated by helplessly flapping her hands and snorting as she laughs.
I wish I could get it on video because it is so hilariously funny.
Often times it’s because of something that she feels terrible about laughing at after, but in the moment she just loses all control and is often unable to regain her composure for several minutes.
A couple of times she has almost turned purple because she was laughing so hard that she couldn’t breathe, and I was mentally reviewing my CPR training thinking that I might have to help her bring her back from the other side.
Just hearing her laugh was the most wonderful medicine to my soul.
It’s almost like a GPS for me. When I feel lost, and honestly don’t know which way I’m going, (which happens way more than I would like to admit) the sound of her laughter tells me that maybe, just maybe, I might be on the right track.
Pretty much all of my life goals circle around the idea of trying to make her happy, and every moment of laughter gives me hope that I might be succeeding.
And in a week that was full of pressure, struggles, exhaustion and frustration, a single moment of laughter was the greatest sound I could hear.
Today I’m grateful for the gift of laughter, and especially grateful for the chance to hear my sweet wife laugh until she flaps her hands and snorts. It’s probably not going to happen for a while after she reads this post, but eventually she will forgive me. She’s had a lot of practice that. :-)
Love you sweetheart. You are the light that guides me home.
Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings