I​’ll be quick. Look at this proverb. No sugar coating here. Our time on earth is but just a blink of time. So let’s enjoy it. 


I’m so lucky. I was raised with family and friends where humour is valued and just part of our normal. Gatherings are smothered with ongoing inside jabs and sarcasm. All in good fun of course. When I get together with family, there are some jokes that have been threaded through thirty or forty years of dinner conversations. Just say you have “numnah” to my uncle on a particularly cold day and he’ll string together stories and end up with tears squeezing out the sides of his eyes with memories of my grandmother. 

It’s healthy, finding the importance and value of belly-warming joy. But also learning to include always those things that bring happiness and fun, even when life is stressful. We laughed on cold and rainy canoe trips and smiled through memories at funerals. We cry with giggles through immature, stupidity. But it keeps us connected. Draws our minds away from stress. Imprints joy into almost every gathering. And trains us to find the positive in almost everything. 

So laugh. Be silly. Get together with your circle and remind each other of the histories that made your sides ache with laughter.
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​If I’m going to get wrinkles, they might as well define some smiling eyes.