Laughing at Yourself Can Be Healthy

May 30th, 2008 by Diane Seymour | 0


Image by ickypoo

Last night, I laughed out loud at myself. The lady going by me in the aisle of the drug store smiled as she passed by. Just moments before, a man had hurried by as I tried on sunglasses at the end of Aisle 5. Almost immediately, he walked by me again going the other way, and before I could take off the brown-tinted, movie-star Foster Grants, he appeared again at my left at the same sunglass display. After picking just one pair up and looking at them, he quickly disappeared again.

Here’s where my imagination collided with my vanity.“Wow, that’s nice”, I thought, “he’s checking me out!” In our small town, single men and women are scarce, so it seemed logical that he purposely moved to my left to see if I was wearing a wedding band, and when he saw it, quickly moved on to find whatever first brought him into the store. While I’m happily married to a man who still thinks (or at least tells me) that I look good even on a bad-hair day, occasionally it’s fun to believe that I’m winning the weight and age battle in other peoples’ eyes.

My moment of vanity vanished in the next moment, when I heard the man ask the clerk, “Do you have any kids’ sunglasses?” So much for his interest in me. That’s when I laughed out loud!

I laughed again, this time quietly, remembering a similar situation from a few years earlier. On a warm, sunny day, I walked out of the local hospital into the parking lot and noticed three young men standing near my car. They were talking, smiling, and looking my way as I walked toward them. You know how some days you feel like you’ve got it together? The hair, the clothes, the attitude…. Well, I had the attitude that day, and those young guys just added to my sense that middle-age wasn’t so bad after all. But, in a split second, my vanity took a nosedive. As I got closer to my car, I could see that those adoring young guys weren’t looking at me; they were admiring an old, beat-up Chevy pick-up truck parked between them and me!

Being able to laugh at myself helps keep me grounded as to what’s really important as a person. My wrinkles will deepen, my hair will continue to gray, and bikini-body days are only memories, but these changes seem unimportant, as I look forward to each new day. Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and laugh often.

Leave a Reply