
Originally published on January 6, 2021 in Resolution
In keeping with the pattern of this issue being a bit of a departure from the norm, I’d like to begin on a slightly serious note by discussing why I decided to include this article on a monthly basis. Truthfully? I was worried that I wasn’t laughing enough. I was concerned that I was rapidly losing my sense of humor.
It sounds like kind of a funny thing to worry about. (I will try to refrain from psychoanalyzing that in a future article.) However, it felt like life had gotten painfully serious and I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d laughed on a regular basis. Granted, I launched the magazine in the midst of a global health crisis and an election year, so life in general wasn’t feeling particularly humorous. That just made it seem all the more important to add a little levity to the mix.
In my quest to inject some humor into my days, I started intentionally seeking out laughter-provoking materials. I would look up sarcastic memes on social media or watch funny cat videos on YouTube. However, what I did next may have taken things too far. I decided to type “laughter meditation” into the search engine on my Insight Timer App.
I have to be honest that I was skeptical about the idea right from the start, but I figured a 2-minute session was a safe test. How bad could it be? It turns out that two minutes was more than enough time to realize that the meditation was going to work for all the wrong reasons.
And so it was with my “meditation.” The misdirected laughter, combined with the memory it induced, had me in stitches. Ultimately I guess it did, indeed, do the trick. Nonetheless, I think I’ll probably stick to cat videos in the future.
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