Have you ever noticed that babies learn very early to laugh and giggle? Of course, they don't have any trouble crying a lot either!
The point is, for babies this is the only form of communication they know! Somewhere along the way, as we become older and wiser...we seem to think that some form of laughing and crying is wrong. We start thinking that one is a shallow emotion, and the other is a sign of weakness. Sort of makes you wonder about the "wiser" part, doesn't it?
I personally think that men have the biggest problem with shedding a tear or two from time to time, but I'll be honest with you...I wouldn't give you two cents for a man that couldn't cry once in a while! I'm not talking about a whiner or cry-baby, but someone that doesn't get embarrassed for having his eyes tear up with the playing of the National Anthem or seeing the sadness in another person's face or hearing the wailing cry of a hungry child!
By the same token, I would not have any respect for someone that couldn't grin a bit at the humor in some of the things life throws our way. One of nature's most precious gifts is the ability to laugh out loud, especially at ourselves from time to time!
Wiser men than I have said it so much better. I wanted to pass on some of the quotes that touch on this emotion!
Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.
Victor Borge
Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
Leo Rosten
Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
Max Eastman
I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.
Edward Albee
I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.
Frank Howard Clark
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
Mohandas Gandhi
If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor.
Jennifer Jones
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
Larry Gelbart
The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.
Jacob August Riis
There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.
Thomas W. Higginson
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
Erma Bombeck
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
Bill Cosby
Henry Ward Beecher
A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.
Mignon McLaughlin
A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.
Hugh Sidey
A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.
Jessamyn West
A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
William Arthur Ward
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
E. B. White
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.
Sid Caesar
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Peter Ustinov
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James
Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
Agnes Repplier
Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
Agnes Repplier
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
Mark Twain
Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.
Irvin S. Cobb
Humor is reason gone mad.
Groucho Marx
Try and find a little time in your day to smile at something, but whatever you do...don't forget that it's only human to cry when you need to! Ater all tears help to water the flower beds of life!
Now, my friends, let's get some coffee and sit outside before the rain get here, OK?
