It’s Not So Serious

I take life very seriously (I also take myself seriously). I get caught up in the drama of what’s happening, the upheaval, the “what’s next.” I surround myself with light-hearted, playful people to remind myself life is more comedic than I make it out to be.

A while back, this great picture circulated around facebook:

Yeah. We’re not going to get out alive anyway, so why take everything so seriously? It’s not going to matter in the end. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting tossed about by the ocean’s currents, flailing this way and that, but instead of thrashing about, I’d prefer to dive deep, to not be so affected by the waves.

A meditation I’ve been doing lately is a mountain meditation where I imagine myself as a mountain and then think about all the weather patterns a mountain experiences. Does a mountain disintegrate because of a thunderstorm? Because the wind is howling? No. And the weather pattern passes. It’s the same with the majority of life’s problems. They seem major! Life-changing! Dramatic! But really they’re not so serious.

A friend and I recounted a story of how several years ago we were called demons in human form. The person we relayed this story to said, “Oh really? How lovely. What kind of demon?” Instead of being outraged on our behalf, he took away the power of the insult by trivializing it because obviously my friend and I aren’t demons in human form so why not play with it?

There’s an expression I think about a lot: “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.” So often I cry, but I’d much rather laugh. Life is so much more enjoyable that way, don’t you think?

I dream of a world where we take ourselves and our lives less seriously. A world where we play more. A world where we laugh more. A world where we are less affected by the events of the day or week. A world where we remember things are not as dramatic as they may seem.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.