Keep on Keeping OnSample

Keep On Laughing

Shakespeare wrote that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Shakespeare had it wrong. Life is not so much told by an idiot as it is all about idiots, and I am not the least of them. Idiots, not all of whom are in Washington, lack the creativity to make up such a tale as a life is, any life, including mine. The randomness, the wild lurches to port and back to starboard in the midst of heavy seas, the deserts, and the deluges back-to-back and back again make me know that God is real. He must be. God is not the Divine Idiot writing our lives as some meaningless yarn full of sound and fury and utterly lacking significance. He does not dictate every detail. We, all of us humans, have added plenty of both sound and fury into our own lives and into the lives of others. What a comedy!

Here is the point.

Only God could take the whole mad, random mess and weave it all together into a lovely quilt.

In my life, for example, though I am not sure of what it is an example, there has been plenty of sound and fury, far too much of both. Of sadness, my own and the sadnesses I have caused, there has been no lack. I have made no secret of my battle, especially in my earlier years, with dark depression. The thing that kept me sane, at least as sane as I have been, is that I never took myself very seriously. I could always, well, usually, see what was funny about it all and about me in particular.

Despite the moments of pain and the seasons of grief, both of which I have experienced, I have also had more than my share of laughter.

Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart does good like a medicine” (MEV).

I determined early on to take my medicine like a big boy. A merry heart may come more naturally to some than others. Circumstances may make for more or less merriment, to be sure, but the bottom line is we can choose to be merry. If there is one thing that can make our senior years better and healthier, it is the sweet, sweet medicine of laughter. My advice to seniors is simple: Laugh lots.