Laugh Anyway

Laughter is good medicine if we choose it.

I’d like to say my coworker pushed that stool out in front of me as I was walking through. I’d like to say there was no avoiding the resulting fall.

The truth is that stool had been there for weeks. The truth is I was in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention. Worse, I was trying to get every bit of sweet nectar out of the Bojangles large sweet tea cup so I had my head back and a face full of cup.

I wish we had a cameras in the office at the time. I’d love to see the footage replayed. It happened so fast I am not sure how it went. All I know is one second I was walking and the next I was laying in the floor. I am not sure if I actually did a flip or not.

When I sat up, my glasses were gone, the ice from my cup was scattered on the floor, one of my backpack straps was off my arm and my coworker was peering over her desk wide eyed looking at me.

There was no looking around to see if anyone saw. They all did.

“I’m okay.” Physically I was okay. But, I could feel the red flushing out my face. How embarrassing.

What took place next happened imperceptibly to those around me and happened in the span of 10 seconds. The devil whispered in my ear, “See you can’t do anything right, you are a loser.” It’s my weakness and his go to move to intimidate me. It stung. I tend to believe him. But, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was funny. Without knowing it, I chose laughter and joy. It gave me life.

To everyone’s credit, they made sure I was okay before laughing. (Although, many were suppressing smiles as they were checking on me.) The fall was so loud people from downstairs came to check. I am still convinced there is a Snapchat of the aftermath but I can’t prove it.

I gathered up my glasses, cleaned up the ice and took off to the job site visit I was headed to before I fell. As I traveled, an idea was born in my heart. At the time, the idea was just an attempt at humor.

I decided to have a little more fun with the whole situation. Instead of being humiliated that I fell, I decided to poke fun at myself. The picture above is the result of that idea.

Not only did I memorialize the fall in a crime scene like manner, I stepped it up a notch and decided to poke fun at my size with a 4’ tall stick figure.

I wish I had been there as people arrived the next morning and found it. It was fun to laugh later about the whole thing. Over the course of several days different people added tape to the floor to depict the backpack, glasses, cup and ice. We laughed many times about it.

What was, at first, an attempt at humor became so much more. Looking back it was a conscious choice to recognize about myself what everyone around me already knows: I am not perfect. It was a willingness to embrace humility. It was laughing at myself for being distracted and falling. It was giving permission for the office to laugh freely at the situation. It was choosing laughter and joy instead of being anxious and embarrassed. It was knowing that the devil is a liar destined for defeat and it was telling him to take that stupid noise about my worth with him as sulked away.

What could have been an incident that isolated me because of my embarrassment, instead became an incident that allowed our team to grow stronger together by laughing together. It’s a memory we share together. Teams that experience moments like that have a common, positive memory etched in their brains. I am sure many of them are reading this with a smile on their face.

How many times have I chosen anger, embarrassment, anxiousness, and low self worth instead of laughter and joy? How many times has my pride kept me from an opportunity for joy?

Proverbs 17:22 says “A cheerful heart is like good medicine but a broken spirit dries up the bones.”

Choose joy. Choose laughter. Even if you are laughing at yourself, choose laughter anyway. Lighten up. Show yourself grace. Remember the devil is already beaten and just making noise. Send him packing.

Always good for a laugh,

Carl

(I work with some of the finest people on the planet. They have become like a second family to me. We have a lot of fun together and have several more stories similar to this that gel us together. Some have moved to new opportunities but we all still laugh about the time Carl did a front flip over the office stool.)