By Meenu Ravi for the KidSpirit Exploring Humor Issue

Laughter is the world’s most common language. I can’t imagine life without laughter. It’s like cake without the yummy frosting.

I think of humor as a sister to love, because when someone is laughing, it seems they beam. When I’m laughing, the air smells sweeter to me, the colors around me are more vivid, nothing else seems to matter much at that moment.

We’re given the power of laughter, not only to laugh AT things, but to laugh things OFF. We’ll always overcome difficulties, but the happy person learns how to laugh most of them off. We must laugh and be merry. Remember: boost the world with a song. Boost the world with a laugh, or perhaps a giggle. Laugh, for the time is brief and we must savor it. Laugh and be proud to belong to the world of humor.

Humor is catching. The music of roaring laughter is far less contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. When laughter is shared, it bonds people of all cultures together and happiness forms. This priceless medicine is fun, free, and easy to use. Your sense of humor is one of the most powerful tools you have to make certain that your daily mood will to take care of itself. Laughter makes you feel confident. The good feeling that you get when you laugh remains with you even after the laughter ceases. Even in the most difficult of times, a laugh — or even simply a smile — can go a long way toward making you feel better.

As laughter and humor become tied to your life, your creativity will bloom and new discoveries for playing with friends and loved ones will occur to you daily. Humor takes you to a higher place where you can view the world from a more relaxed, positive, creative, joyful, perspective. A laugh costs nothing, but creates much. It enhances those who receive, without failing those who give. It happens in a blink and the memory of it lasts forever.

God made Heaven and Earth for joy. Made them, and filled them full of laughter. The splendid joy of the stars sing in the language everyone can make out, the language of Laughter. So we must laugh and drink from the deep turquoise cup of the sky, join the exultant song of the humorous stars giggling by, laughing in the blue-green land of Earth. Laughter creates a dent of happiness in life.

When she wrote this piece, Meenu Ravi was 13 years old. She is from Boston, Massachusetts, and enjoys gymnastics, art, writing poems about nature, and being outdoors.


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