"When Life Is No Joke, Laugh Anyway"

Our most recent bride and groom asked two of her cousins to read a poem. It was entitled "When Life is No Joke, Laugh Anyway" Excerpted from There Is a Season by Joan Chittister, O.S.B.

It talks all about the times you should laugh...with small children, when you wear mismatched shoes, when your best laid plans go astray... (I have attached the poem below because it was so much fun!)

One of the cousins who was reading started his line, "Laugh... when you forget your line" and he pulled out his copy of the poem and continued reading. All 215 people in attendance started laughing and clapping. It was such an appropriate statement that it made the poem really hit home and gave everyone a good laugh.

They got a huge round of applause at the end and he became the star of the ceremony! SO remember a good laugh does wonders, you can't always control everything that happens on your wedding day, but 9 times out of 10, those small things become the things you look back on with the most fondest memories.

"When Life Is No Joke, Laugh Anyways" Excerpted from There Is a Season by Joan Chittister, O.S.B.

There are some things that must always be laughed at in life:

1. Laugh when people tell a joke. Otherwise you might make them feel bad.

2. Laugh when you look into a mirror. Otherwise you might feel bad.

3. Laugh when you make a mistake. If you don't, you're liable to forget how ultimately unimportant the whole thing really is, whatever it is.

4. Laugh with small children. It will restore your delight in the fundamental things of life. It will also improve your sense of humor. Have you ever noticed what children laugh at? They laugh at mashed bananas on their faces; mud in their hair; a dog nuzzling their ears; the sight of their bottoms as bare as silk. It renews your perspective. Clearly, nothing is as bad as it could be.

5. Laugh at situations that are out of your control. When the best man comes to the altar without the wedding ring, laugh. When the dog jumps through the window screen at the dinner guests on your doorstep, sit down and laugh awhile. When you find yourself in public wearing mismatched shoes, laugh--as loudly as you can. Why collapse in mortal agony? There’s nothing you can do to change things now. Besides, it is funny. Ask me; I’ve done it.

6. Laugh at anything pompous, at anything that needs to puff its way through life in robes and titles. Because laughter is a social virtue, it will help the rest of us see the difference between what is authentic in life and what is not. Will Rogers laughed at all the public institutions of modern life. For instance, “You can’t say civilization isn’t advancing,” he wrote. “In every war they kill you in a new way.” And thanks to his laughter we began to see what was going on around us in fresh and shocking perspective.

7. Finally, laugh when all your carefully laid plans get changed: when the plane is late and the restaurant is closed and the last day’s screening of the movie of the year was yesterday. You’re free now to do something else, to be spontaneous for a change, to take a piece of life and treat it with outrageous abandon.