Laugh it off.

Life is hard. When you think you have it all figured out, it throws a wrench at you. Laughter is a slim sliver of sun light in the dark, a small glimmer of hope when the odds are stacked, people can use it as a beacon, to kind of recenter themselves. When you’re at your lowest point, something worse can come and hit you like a train. Nothing in life is easy, nothing worth accomplishing is going to be a walk in the park. One of the biggest parts of life is dealing with disappointment and struggle. There’s no way you can avoid it, the real question is how can people move past it and deal with it. Personally, I laugh! It sounds weird but it’s not as strange as it seems! I was broken down just off the turnpike with a dead cell phone, no tools, no owners booklet, and a fried battery. I was an hour away from home, stuck at an old Fedex freight parking lot at 7 at night.

It was raining, but a cold rain with a good gusting wind, it was dark accept for the few street lights that lead down to the closed Fedex building. We popped the hood to our overheating truck and saw the belt had fallen off, and so had the diagram telling us how to get it back on. “It’s fine, lets just start figuring it out.” my buddy said, so we checked all the pulleys and of course one was broken, so we were dead in the water. We sat in the truck and just sat back and looked out at the nothingness figuring out a plan. when for no reason both of us started to laugh, first softly and broken up, then within a minute we were each laughing for no reason other than it was the only thing we could do. “Why are we laughing?” He said next to me “What else are we supposed to do, we’re dead in the water right now, no use stressing over something we can’t change.” I responded. He reached out back and dug around and came back up with a bag of chips, a donut and 2 bottles of water. He handed me the donut and water bottle and raised his “Here’s to a long night ahead.” he said, we both laughed some more and ate under the street light figuring out a plan.

We later resorted to flagging down passing by cars and trucks that came up the Fedex road, we saw 2 or 3 every hour and spent the rest of the time trying to make a quick fix on the truck. After a little bit we found a car who would let us use their phone, we contacted who we needed to get a hold of and went back into the truck. Wet, cold, and tired we again started to laugh knowing we were finally gonna get out of here! Another hour past and a tow truck finally arrived to bring us back home, on the ride home we found ourselves joking about the whole situation all night. When you laugh instead of panic I feel as though it keeps you calm and centered, it’s easier to make decisions when you’re calm and composed, and it’s why I tell everyone just take a deep breath and laugh it off.

Photo by <a href=”https://foter.com/author/52a48f”>Arnett Gill</a> on <a href=”https://foter.com/re/8486fa”>Foter.com</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-ND</a>