Heart-Lightening Mirth

When I ripped off yesterday's page this morning, 

today's illustrated sentiment was true of my experience the evening before.

got that?

 

 The friend who had sent me this daily calendar for my birthday also happens to be a friend I've known and loved since my birth (hers being only two weeks before my own). Last night, as I was unwinding in front of the television she came to mind over a funny memory that involved her so I sent her a text to let her know it.

By the time we were in the middle of our digital conversation, I was guffawing so loudly, I was sure the slumbering hunk to my left (my husband, just to clarify) would be jolted from his comatose state. I wish I could share our conversation with you, but it simply would not be appropriate. And those are some of the best kind of friends to have...the ones with which you can be totally inappropriate with, and not have to explain yourself afterwards.

 It brought to mind the importance of having a friend to call when you're knee deep in what rhymes with "Mit" AND  to have the friend (or friends) who can send you into a fit of spontaneous laughter, even through the simplest modes of communication...like a text. The tear of an empathetic friend is equally as valuable is the ability to send one's hand slapping against the knee in breathless laughter. Both leave a person feeling squarely loved.

These small heart-lightening, spirit-lifting moments of mirth are some of life's finest offerings.

“It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

 What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.  

~Yiddish Proverb

 A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically.  It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods.  

~Author unknown, from an editorial in New-York Tribune, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren

Laughter is an instant vacation.  

~Milton Berle

 and finally, on a "serious" note:

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.  

~Jack Handey, "Deep Thoughts," Saturday Night Live