Laughter: Soap of the Soul

“As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul.” – Yiddish Proverb

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Texting with a friend after she’d had a rough night of despair at the state of the world. I asked her how she slept and what she’s doing for herself. She writes back:

“I go through the alphabet and choose calming words - awareness, breath, etc. When I got to Y, the first word that came to mind was yodeling. That's positive, isn't it?”

I get to giggling and texting yodeling memes.

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Trouble knocked at the door, but, hearing laughter, hurried away. ~ Benjamin Franklin

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At dinner with a friend. Talking about the reckless destruction in our country, our loss of humanity, the cruelty. Then somehow I am telling stories of my brief elementary school theatrical career.

In 5th Grade, I’d wanted with all my awkward 11-year-old heart to be Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. When I hadn’t gotten into the play at all, I cried for so long that I gave myself a sinus infection. When someone unexpectedly dropped out of the show, I got to be in the chorus. You could see my chapped nose from the audience.

In 6th Grade, I was cast as Snoopy, complete with a costume hood with ears that flew up when I pulled a string (every time the wires got more hopelessly tangled in my hair). At some point in every performance, I’d look around the silent stage and think, “SOMEbody’s forgotten their line.” It was me. Every. single. time.

The world is still a hopeless mess. But my friend and I laugh until we are breathless.

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“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

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Friday night at the end of a long, depressing week. I listlessly scroll through my email and find this poem linked at the end of Lael Jepson’s blog post:

At Albany Bulb with Elaine

By Alison Luterman

Side by side on a log by the bay.

Sunlight. Unleashed dogs,

prancing through surf, almost exploding

out of their skins with perfect happiness.

Dogs who don't know about fired park rangers,

or canceled health research, or tariff wars,

or the suicide hotline for veterans getting defunded,

or or or. We've listed horror upon horror

to each other for weeks now, and it does no good,

so instead I tell her how I held a two-day old baby

in my arms, inhaling him like a fresh-baked loaf of bread,

then watched as a sneeze erupted through his body

like a tiny volcano. It was the look of pure

astonishment on his face, as if he were Adam

in the garden of Eden making his debut achoo,

as if it were the first sneeze that ever blew,

that got me. She tells me how her dog

once farted so loudly he startled himself

and fell off the bed where he'd been lolling,

and then the two of us start to laugh so hard

we almost fall off our own log. And this

is our resistance for today; remembering

original innocence. And they can't

take it away from us, though they ban

our very existence, though they slash

our rights to ribbons, we will have

our mirth and our birthright gladness.

Long after every unsold Tesla

has vaporized, and earth has closed over

even the names of these temporary tyrants,

somewhere some women like us

will be sitting side by side, facing the water,

telling human stories and laughing still.

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Ski goggle kitty.

I mean, come on.

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“Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.” ~ John Cleese

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Laugh. Find something. Anything. Go watch the ski goggle kitty again. No matter how low brow or silly, choose something that gets you to giggling. “[Y]our mirth and [y]our birthright gladness” is a radical act of freedom.

No Margins: How Do I Live A Less-Squished Life?

Note: I’m taking a break from the Gentle Rewilding series to go to the ocean (see more on making space for what matters below). If you’d like to catch up on the Gentle Rewilding series – an exploration of ways to reconnect to our human design – you can find them below. I’ll resume with Gentle Rewilding of Hips on Sept 28.

* Find Part 1 – Gentle Rewilding & Feet here.

* Find Part 2 – Gentle Rewilding: Hands here.

* Find Part 3 – Gentle Rewilding: Spine here.

* Find Part 4 – Gentle Rewilding: Shoulders here.

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“I'm actively practicing not doing in August because it's a muscle that no one will encourage me to workout. And it will atrophy without strengthening it periodically. Not doing is some of the hardest doing I (and my clients) ever do, so it requires training. And the reason I do it is because that's where I get bored, creative, lost, wander from what's known, find my answers and inspiration.”

~ Lael Jepson, on taking the month of August off for the past 10 years

My Strength Training notebook: Just like 3rd grade, I have no margins.

When I was a kid, my school notebooks drove my Dad to distraction. I filled every page of every notebook to the very edges. Every line. No margins. Even in third grade, I left myself no space.

Thanks to our pervasive achievement culture, I get sucked into the illusion that the more I do, the more worthy and deserving I’ll be and the better I’ll feel. Living with little to no margins makes me a productive little soldier of patriarchal capitalism, but it’s relentless. There is always ALWAYS something more to do. Living with no margins may meet with the approval of our culture, but it is not thriving.

Intellectually, I know this: trying to suck all the juice out of life sucks all the juice out of life. Trying to schmush everything into a too small space feels cramped and indecipherable. As uncomfortable as it often is, though, I know I get a rush from all that doing: a hit of adrenaline that is oddly addictive. That adrenaline becomes my drug of choice and I resist making space and doing less. I resist relaxing.

A recent episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast explored this very tendency. Amanda, one of the podcast hosts and high powered, super-smart lawyer, had been challenged by her co-hosts (who are also her sister and sister-in-law) to incorporate relaxation habits into her days. They gave her a list of things to try – taking a walk, meditation, breathing practices, a cold plunge – and then asked her to report back a month later. At the end of the month, she’d done none of it.

Her sisters were gobsmacked, but I completely understood.

If someone I cared about had given me a list of relaxation practices, the only difference would have been that I would have done all of those things like they were my JOB. Relaxation would have not figured in at all – only getting those things done. Amanda just took a different route to the same place by not doing them at all.

I am not ignorant of my margin-less tendencies. I do see myself doing it and yet somehow feel powerless to stop it.

Last week, I’d been exhausted every day yet kept powering through. Friday was my day “off” but I’d scheduled it to the gills. I was planning to do strength work, then to work on shopping and cooking to fill the freezer for our upcoming trip, then to play pickleball to work on my serve and my backhand, then back home to work on classes for next week. I felt numb and spent but I was going through with my plan anyway.

As I hurriedly got ready, my beloved asked if I wanted to go for a walk in the woods. Sigh. I told him I wanted to but no, I couldn't because of all the things I wanted to get done.

He knows me and didn’t question it. He kissed me and walked out.

As he walked out the door, my heart nearly caved in. What was I doing? Saying no to a walk with him? I’d felt flat and tired all week but my default when feeling that flatness is to rev up and do more. Part of me felt safe in all the doing but another part knew clearly this was not a great choice.

I sat with my feelings, felt the ache in my heart and asked myself, what do you want? I want to go for that walk.

A text canceled pickleball. I jumped in the car and drove to the park. I knew he was doing the loop hike that we love but didn’t know which direction he went, so I parked, jumped out of the car and started running.

I was either ahead of him and therefore running away from him or he was coming the other way and I was running toward him. I had no idea. I stopped breathless a couple of times realizing how ridiculous it was to think I could find him in the woods. He could be anywhere. But there was something about shaking myself out of the stupor of doing things efficiently and for a reason. I just kept running.

Up and down the hills. Over rocks and roots. Through a thousand spider webs. And then, there he was. Looking at me with shock. "What the hell?" he said as I threw my sweaty arms around him and told him how stupid it was to say no to a walk in the woods with him.

He took it in his unflappable stride as I sweated and cried all over his shirt. I wiped my eyes, kissed him a dozen times and we had a lovely walk in the late summer woods.

I would love to tell you that I am now cured of living with no margins. I would love to give you a rom-com ending about how I’ve strung up a hammock, thrown out my To Do lists and sip iced tea all day. That hasn’t happened.

But I am asking myself different questions about what I’m doing and why. I’m looking carefully at how I spend my time and wondering about different ways of doing things. And ways of not doing things.

If you, too, are a recovering No Margins person, I’d love to hear about your experience. If you aren’t, how is it to be with the No Marginers in your life, incomprehensible as we are. Do leave a comment and help us all navigate achievement culture without missing what matters. In the spirit of margin making, I will be traveling next week, contemplating how a less-squished life might look. I’ll keep you posted.

“It’s Not Rocket Science...For You”

During a freaking delightful conversation with coach, storyteller and writer Lael Jepson* (with whom I might be a little bit in love), I recognized a tendency I see in myself and my community.

Lael and I had a wide-ranging talk about being an accidental author, women and volcanoes, and the handful of words with which she does not abide. She was full of so many juicy morsels that I could barely stand it.

At one point she said that people tell her that she “distills shit” for them, that she weaves stuff together that they hadn’t connected. Until she showed them.

She laughed and said, “Doesn’t everybody?”

(Spoiler alert: Nope. No, we do not.)

I stopped her and said, “Isn’t that so often the way? The things that come naturally, that are effortless for us, we assume everybody can do and don’t put much value on.” We don’t give ourselves credit for the things we didn’t struggle for.

She nodded and said she always knows somebody is dismissing their gifts when they say, “Well, it’s not rocket science.”

To which Lael responds, “It’s not rocket science...for YOU.”

For me “rocket science” has two sides: the things we do well and therefore undervalue and the things that we undervalue in others because it seems easy for them.

What comes naturally to you? What is something that you do that others admire and count on but you think is obvious or simple?

Can you cook a delicious meal? Build a great program? Lift people up with your words? Are you patient while others are losing their shit? What is your superpower?

Just because you don't struggle to do something doesn’t undermine its value. It may not feel like rocket science to you, but your “not rocket science” could take us places we might not otherwise be able to go.

And on the other side of things, when you see someone doing something that they seem naturally talented at, do you think no effort goes into it?

Whenever I’m watching a gifted musician perform, I remind myself that I’m listening to decades of practice. When I look at an artist’s latest masterpiece, I pause and consider how much effort went into building their skill so they could create it. It may look easy from the outside but even rocket scientists have to study.

We are all have our own particular brand of genius medicine we have to offer the world. Celebrate and honor the genius and the effort it takes to cultivate that genius, in all of us.

* My conversation with Lael was in preparation for an interview I’m doing with her in January. UPDATE: Here is the interview! Give it a watch/listen here.