Pat Bean's blog

            “A Day without laughter is a day wasted.” – Charlie Chaplin

These flowers and butterfly I saw at the Botanical Gardens in Phoenix didn’t make me laugh, but they certainly put a smile on my face. — Photo by Pat Bean

Giggling is Good for the Soul

The more I live on this planet, the more I enjoy, and am thankful for, anyone and anything that makes me laugh. I’ve even begun recording things that bring a smile to my face in my journals so I can smile a second time down the road a bit.

But my friend, Kris, who always makes me laugh, brought a big smile to my face as turned into a butterfly during our visit to the gardens. — Photo by Pat Bean

As I do so, I’ve begun noticing that the kind of things that make me laugh the loudest – belly laughing I call it — are more likely to be things that have me laughing at myself.

For example, the quote: “Writer’s block is only a problem for those who can afford it.”  This made me laugh because while I occasionally suffer from writer’s block these days, I never once had it before I retired when I wrote for a living.

I laugh at the who-walked-into-a- bar jokes that one son is always telling me, and the knock-knock jokes a young grandson has discovered, or the corny jokes told in a melodrama a friend and I recently saw here in Tucson at the Gaslight Theater. It was called “The Vampire” and the show had me giggling throughout the night.

Meanwhile, I’ve also come to notice that I’m not laughing at the late-night comedians – you know who they are — who mock people and what’s going on in the world today. For one thing, I don’t consider this kind of material something to laugh about.

For another, it seems like such rhetoric is a kind of bullying, certainly not the kind of laughter that will help a polarized nation come together, encourage people to practice kindness or set good examples to young people who make fun of or bully any kid who is different.

Am I alone in feeling this way? I really want to know.

Bean Pat: Another Unscheduled Interruption: Michael   https://1writeway.com/2018/10/10/another-unscheduled-interruption-hurricanemichael/#like-19323  Hope we learn what happened next.

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/y8z7553y  Currently, she is writing a book, tentatively titled Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com