There is a reason laughter is good for your soul. You are lifted up out of the ordinary and serious and transported to a place of mirth and merriment. A happy place. A kinder gentler place.
This little video had me laughing out loud. Perhaps you need to watch and take a mini vacation, too.
When we lose our way or feel overwhelmed, we can return to nature and be renewed. Hear the birds singing their spring song. Watch them collect twigs and bits for their nests. See the long grass ripple in a gentle wind like ocean waves. Breathe in the sweet earthy fragrance of the morning. Feel small and surrounded by an amazing, complicated system that has been pulsating with life for millions of years. That awe is good for us:
“It has long been established that a healthy diet and lots of sleep and exercise bolster the body’s defenses against physical and mental illnesses. But the new study, whose findings were just published in the journal Emotion, is one of the first to look at the role of positive emotions in that arsenal.
“That awe, wonder, and beauty promote healthier levels of cytokines suggests that the things we do to experience these emotions—a walk in nature, losing oneself in music, beholding art—has a direct influence upon health and life expectancy,” says UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, a coauthor of the study.”
Breathe in the day, full of life and possibility. Breathe out the stress, the worry, the defeat. In. Out. In. Out. In.
What is it we’re after anyway? What’s the point of it all? Is it the snapshot moment, or the joy it is trying to depict? Is it the fishing, or the sense of communing with nature, being part of something larger than ourselves? In our Instagram culture, we may lose sight of the forest for the trees. We may get so good at putting on the appearance, we lose sight of the reality.
QuotableCreek.com 