Have you laughed recently?

How long has it been since you’ve had a belly laugh? The one that shakes your whole body, and you’re afraid you won’t stop and breathe, and it goes on and on…

I laughed plenty since, but it was a couple weeks ago I laughed wholeheartedly as such. Once again, it was the most mundane silly thing I was laughing about as it is with these things. We were, two families, playing a board game with our kids. Was it the expression on my friend’s face right before, or was it her spontaneous laughter that induced it I don’t know, but once I started I couldn’t stop along with her. I now realize the abandon in it, the full acceptance of, and attendance to the quirkiness of us, of life. The others weren’t amused as much judging from their short chuckles, so I can’t even tell you ‘you had to be there to get it’.

I know suffering is all around us, and we are not immune to it, we suffer. Yet, laughter is also there waiting, not for a grandiose moment, and not for a grandiose life where things are in order but just for us to put down our shields, and embrace our quirkiness, fleetingness, and connection. Maybe that is what all this suffering is for in fact, to strip us off that thick shield, so that we live, laugh, cry freely. I notice it is easier to remove the shield around certain people; the ones that are not fooled by the armors, the ones that live authentically, and show up without it. And it is just as easy to find oneself fully armored around some, those who will never show up without it, those, on the contrary, are proud of how thick their armor is as if the point of life is protection…  I can understand armoring of course, for I fear uncertainty as much as anyone, and I also want to be perceived in uplifting light, but more than anything, I long to live truthfully.

This is how Tara Brach puts it; listen till the end, she will make you laugh:))