Laughter

When I croak, I suspect that my family will put on my gravestone, “He had a big laugh.”

I come by it naturally. It runs in my family. And not only my immediate family, but my extended family too. Once I went to my Dad’s Mom’s family reunion–and they were laughing so loudly I think you could have heard us across the park. I remember thinking, “This loud laugh of mine comes down the generations.”

I’ll own it.

My kids have found it to be a convenient homing device. If they can’t find me at church they listen for my laugh. They think it’s hysterical.

Laughter doesn’t have to be loud–but it needs to be present. If it’s missing from your home or your organization, you would be wise to take stock of the reasons why, and work to reverse the situation.

Then unexpectedly the King laughed. His body was very big and his laugh was like an earthquake in it, loud and deep and long, till in the end Ransom laughed too, though he had not seen the joke, and the Queen laughed as well. And the birds began clapping their wings and the beasts wagging their tails, and the light seemed brighter and the pulse of the whole assembly quickened, and new modes of joy that had nothing to do with mirth as we understand it passed into them all, as it were from the very air, or as if there were dancing in Deep Heaven. Some say there always is.

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra, 209.