LAUGHTER.

WRITER: TIEGAN HATCH

UTAH

“The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.” -Marjorie Pay Hinckley

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Laughter is the best cure”, and guess what? It is. I remember the first guy I dated. He told me one night that we were just too different. He was breaking up with me. It was my very first experience dealing with a situation like this. But every time I look back on that night, I remember one part very clearly. I remember getting into my car and instead of crying, I started to laugh.

Life is always going to throw situations at us that just don’t seem to make sense at the moment. We often feel defeated, as if we lost the battle this time. But we haven’t. We never lose, but instead gain. We gain an experience. A story to tell our friends. Laughter helps us change perspective about ourselves.

The older I have gotten the more I have tried to laugh about the awkward moments, the times I slip on the ice, when I look bad in a photo, and even the times when I am sitting in my room crying. I laugh because it makes me love life even more.

One of my favorite pictures of myself is one my friend took of me laughing. I love it because it’s not my prettiest picture, but it’s my most natural. I am not posed and I didn’t ask my friend to wait while I fixed my hair and turned to my good side. Rather, she caught me in a moment of happiness. Rather than focus on my body image, the photo portrays the feeling of humor, which I believe has a much bigger impact.