Lighten Up

I first noticed it twenty-seven years ago. I was watch­ing a vol­ley­ball game at the sum­mer camp I was putting on for teens. They could not play the game just for the fun of the game. They took every­thing per­sonal. Ver­bal (and almost phys­i­cal) fights arose over a mean­ing­less lit­tle camp game. They played like they were going for the gold in the Olympics. Sev­eral times I had to stop the game and tell them that it was just a game.

Dur­ing this same time, road rage started becom­ing the topic of some of the news mag­a­zines. I also noticed that songs like “Get Over It” were becom­ing pop­u­lar. Lit­tle league games became fights between par­ents and fans. With lawyers on retainer, every­thing became an issue of do or die. What hap­pened our world? How did we slip off the edge? How did we get to be so serious?

I have never been able to answer those ques­tions. I have sev­eral the­o­ries, but none of them seem to solve the mys­tery fully. I even found myself going along with the trend. It was mis­er­able. Then I broke with “real­ity” (thank God). I began to lighten up. Pro­gres­sively, as every­one else got to be more and more seri­ous, I found my inner clown. Not every­one was happy about that. Some took me as irrev­er­ent (and I was at times). Oth­ers thought I was being insin­cere (and toward them I prob­a­bly was). With a smile, I just went on with my lit­tle life. Para­dox­i­cally, I became seri­ously unserious.

No mat­ter what you are fac­ing, get­ting more seri­ous about it will not help. What­ever you do, do not get too seri­ous about your high blood pres­sure. Stop mea­sur­ing your waist­line. God really and truly does not care if you go up a size or down a size (trust me on this one). He is too busy with the “lilies of the field and the birds of the air.” Cel­e­bra­tion is the keynote of Deity’s designs. Joy is the promi­nent feel­ing. Life is some­thing to embrace and cher­ish. We were not put here to com­pete but to love.

Seri­ous sit­u­a­tions are merely the raw mate­r­ial for humor. With a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion you can find a way to smile about any­thing you are facing.

Lighten up!