Seriously, don’t take life so seriously

Adults take the world so seriously. Maybe it’s just because we’re tired. Too much responsibility, disappointment, delay… whatever it is that takes us away from that life-stream we’re born into. Most adults are very serious and sober. So, let’s make a serious study of what it would be like to go back a few years to live life less seriously.

Look at children. They live so close to that source of life it bubbles out of them. They are also connected to other people in a way that we somehow forget as we grow older. They smile up at perfect strangers on the bus and talk about where they are going what they are doing who their dad is and what they had for lunch. They are also connected to themselves, having no problem asking for what they want, and managing to see the world as a circus or a playground.

Sometimes it takes a child’s eye to see the fun the world offers in an upside down and backwards kind of way. In a restaurant when we’re considering the linen table cloths and fine food they’re thinking:

“Mama, can I go tap dancing on that table?”

“Mama, can I drum on the windows?”

“Mama, can I tickle my brother until he giggles?”

“Mama, can I fly off this chair?”

As sober adults we too often don’t even think about the fun in doing strange things. We immediately see the danger. We soberly and seriously think about how the table may get scratched, or the windows broken, the brother bothered or a head bumped in an attempted chair fly-off attempt.

It does take a little doing to get past your life experience and just have fun again. Just to get another person to giggle with you may seem a colossal attempt. Maybe just getting to the place that you want to giggle is hard.

Kathy Jacobson, author of Do Tell, says, “We take ourselves so seriously and we don’t like to laugh.” That’s no good and gets us all pent up in the long run. She suggests doing wacky things to break our “serious” habits.

Try getting a Dr. Seuss book and reading it out loud with funny voices, or act like a chicken when there is someone around to watch. Maybe you can’t actually make the table a dance floor, but it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine it. So, as you go through your day try just taking a few normal things in your world and think about what you might do with them if you were a child. Have you jumped on your bed recently? Have you ever climbed the railing on your deck? Have you ever picked up sticks in your back yard or in the park just to see how far you can thrown them? Maybe you just need to keep an eye out for bugs or leaves or flowers and watch how they move or feel in on your fingers.

Or maybe you could go over to your brother’s house and tickle him until he giggles. Now, there’s an idea, think of the walls it would break down, especially if it has been years since you laughed together.

Seriously, don’t take life so seriously. Even just for one day or one hour or one minute, change your perspective and you may change your world.