Do You Remember Being Silly?

Most of us take things way too seriously. And yet, laughter, we are told, is good for our health and well being. But teens and children can break out in the kind of laughter that is both silly and healthy.

Silly -- the laugh until you are silly -- no thought, no hidden meaning -- no deep complexity -- just feeling the laugh. Today, I read an article about how good that kind of laughing is for us, how healing it is. But as adults, we seldom indulge in this kind of all out laughter that is so healthy.

I am remembering a time in high school. It was Sunday evening vespers, and the teens of the youth group were sitting butt to butt in the smallest pew in the church. The one right down front, right under the gaze of the minister.

No one knows what got into us that night. The minister, who was also my father, was preaching about something that had to do with the death of Jesus and the resurrection. One of the teens started giggling. Not loud, but being so close together, the teen next to her started giggling too. Within seconds, we were all giggling. We kept trying to stop, but when we did, another giggle would get us started again. It was like we had a common silly bone!

We dared not look at each other as we tried to stop giggling. Nor did we dare look at my father. You could feel the person next to you holding his breath, trying to stop -- and the giggle rushing through you, and just as you were about to erupt, you would stifle it, sending it to the kid on the other side of you. Then the pew would shake, and everyone would lose it again.

There seemed no way of stopping: the more we tried, the worse it got . . . until . . . .

"Funny though it may seem," my father the minister staring down at us said in his sternest voice, penetrating all of us simultaneously, "you children do not understand . . ."

We stopped and stared straight ahead, mortified until the end of the service. With the last word of the benediction, as the organ plowed into the recessional, we all stood, the giggles becoming hoots, and we beat a hasty retreat out of the sanctuary, laughing all the way.

What I was reading that brought back this memory can be found at http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/05/17/the-healing-power-of-laughter/ -- In the beginning of the article there is a statement: "Stephen Colbert was interviewed in Parade magazine a while back, and he explained the night he burst out of his shell of pretension and was able to fully be himself on stage. He said, “Something burst that night, and I finally let go of the pretension of not wanting to be a fool.”  And  another paragraph that caught my notice and reminded me of this laughing event: "Laughter and humor, then, forge that space between stimulus and response, or between a thought and a feeling, between an event and an emotion. And in that pause is the freedom to adjust our perspective and our interpretation of our situation. It seems small. But it’s rather substantial." by Therese J. Borshard, The Healing Power of Laughter from the World of Psychology