Being the change

Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of your heart. Mort Walker

When my youngest daughter, Liseanne, was a little girl, she loved to laugh. Her giggle was a deep, rumbling gurgle that erupted up from her belly, cascading out of her body, creating ripples of 'I feel good' all around her. She seldom cried, in fact, when she was about four, I asked her older sister to teach her how to throw a tantrum -- the theory being, what we don't do in childhood we'll end up doing in adulthood. Liseanne never did learn to throw a very good tantrum, and as an adult, she would still rather stuff emotional distress full of humour than have it eat away at her equilibrium with regret and anger. I admire her, she is adept at 'letting it go'.

Me, on the other hand, well, I'm not so adept at just letting it go. I tend to 'take myself too seriously'.

Last night, C.C. and I had a long chat about my tendency to 'give it all', to weigh myself down with wanting to change the world.

"It's a beautiful quality, your desire to want the best for people," he said. "It's one of the many things about you I love. I wonder though if in caring so much you are remembering to give yourself medicine, to nurture yourself so you have the energy to keep doing what you do without depleting yourself?"

I laughed. Okay, so it wasn't a very humorous laugh, more like a nervous giggle. Like when your funny bone gets hit and it doesn't really feel all that funny but who cries over a hurt funny bone?

I knew he'd hit a nerve.

"I wonder why when you said that I felt tears immediately rise?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "Only you can answer that."

Good point.

It's like when my friend C.S. said the other day, "I don't know how you do what you do."

I felt tears rise.

Don't they get it, someone has to. If not me, who?

And therein lies the crux of my dilemma. I know it has to be done. I know we need to care for those who can't care for themselves -- but I gotta keep my sense of humour about it. I gotta keep myself balanced. I can't care so much it's at the expense of those I love and me.

When you give so much to people 'out there' and have nothing left to give to people 'in here', there's a problem.

And I've been creating a problem. I've lost my sense of humour. Lost my perspective on the world around me.

Time to imbue it with a little bit of fun and laughter. Joy and frivolity. Love and tenderness.

It's like when my brother died in a car accident and we went to the funeral. People spoke of him as this amazing man who did so much for them, who always gave, always laughed. Always smiled. Always lent a hand, stood by them when they were in need. I was moved to hear their eulogies of my brother. He was a wonderful man. My memories of him were tainted by our familial angst, the tug pull of the alcohol that consumed him and my desire to protect myself from the barbs of his angry outbursts.

In his passing, I have come full circle to love the brother who taught me how to ride a bike. Who made me laugh with him, dance with him, leap for joy with him when we were young and carefree. My brother cared a lot. About people, animals, the world around him. My brother laughed a lot too. He was very funny and always wanted people to smile and 'feel good'.

Something I can learn from him, and my daughter is, when I create a world around me that 'feels good', I am letting the change I want to see in the world begin with me.

C.C. last night said, "One of the things I find most powerful at Choices is the statement, Changing the world one heart at a time. No one can change the world in one fell swoop, Louise. We can all create change though by starting with ourselves and letting love grow outward from where we're at, one person at a time."

Time to breathe. To move back into the circle of love that is my family and friends. To reconnect with what is really important to me -- the legacy of being known by those I love as a woman of integrity, love, kindness and caring. A woman who knows the value of what she has is greatest when she's creating value from the inside out. Time to let love be expressed in the laughter I share, the smiles I create and the 'feel good' changes I make in me.

I can still keep doing what I'm doing, being who I am, I just need to let go of taking myself so seriously I forget, I am not responsible for the world. My job isn't to change the world. My job is to be the change I want to create in the world around me -- and that comes with a whole bucket full of laughter and joy.

The question is: Are you taking yourself too seriously? Are you giving yourself the medicine of laughter, sunny days and buckets of joy? Are you being the change of love and joy?