"Every day without a smile is a lost day" Charles Spencer Chaplin once said
Hardly anyone questions that laughter is fun. I think most people enjoy laughing. And probably everyone knows the moments when you cry with laughter, hold your aching stomach and can hardly breathe. But laughing is not only beautiful and fun. It is also good for our health. We "train" around 300 muscles and boost our metabolism because we breathe in air and oxygen. And while the happiness hormones are released, the release of stress hormones is suppressed. So it has only advantages. It's fun, we get in a good mood and it's good for our body. So we should do it as often as possible. For us and for our bodies.
But why and what do we laugh about? Especially in everyday life. When we get up in the morning, go to work, come home in the evening and fall tired into bed? Or during Corona. When we didn't even leave the house.
When was the last time you laughed today? When the colleague told a (flat) joke? When the child pronounced a word funny? About the picture in the WhatsApp family chat? About the joke of the day in the newspaper?
When I ran my first competitive half marathon, the last kilometre was my worst. I knew I would make my goal, but everything hurt. I thought I wouldn't make that one last kilometre. But a friend, who is a trained triathlete and had been at the finish line for a long time, came to meet me and ran the last kilometre with me. He knew how close I was to my goal and he saw how bad I was feeling. The first thing he asked me was, "Are you in pain?". I tried to answer with the last of my strength. He then said, "Laugh." I thought it was so absurd at that moment, but I couldn't think about it either. So I laughed. Only briefly and perhaps a little ironically. Of course, not all the pain was gone afterwards. But they were at least briefly forgotten. Maybe because they were really covered by endorphins, or maybe because I just briefly asked myself, "Why?" But since that moment, I let everyone laugh who can't run with me anymore or is in pain. They're probably all thinking the same thing I was at the time. But at least they are thinking about something other than the pain for the moment.