I sometimes ponder the random sequence of events in life.  It seems that when you are in the flow and open to opportunities, chance events occur with one thing leading to another.  This is exactly what happened when I signed up for financial planning workshops a few months ago.  I had no idea that I would be participating in a physical fitness assessment as a result of this.  Staying open to the flow makes life very interesting and brings an air of adventure as well.  This reminds me of one of my favourite storybook characters from childhood – Curious George, the ever inquisitive little monkey who mastered the art of adventure!

As I stood waiting for my fitness assessment to begin, I surveyed the many different types of apparatus surrounding me.  One in particular intrigued me, as I am sure it would have intrigued Curious George.  It looked like an elaborate bathroom scale with metal plates and retractable handles.  This machine was going to be my very first test.  I was asked to remove my shoes and socks and step onto the metal plates while taking hold of the handles.  I envisioned a surge of electrical energy channelling through my body as the machine was turned on and braced myself for it, but thankfully there was no sensation, not even the slightest buzz.  The only shock I felt was from stepping onto the cold metal plates with my bare soles.  The machine flashed a series of numbers revealing not only my weight, but also the percentages of my body fat and water, muscle and bone mass.  I took a deep breath as I stepped off of the scale, feeling like I had just completed my first test for the next mission in space.  T-minus 10 and counting.  I mentally prepared myself for the results.

You will be glad to know that I almost qualify for a launch into the stratosphere!  The scale alone did not reveal this but further tests involving my flexibility and endurance levels led to this conclusion.  As it turns out, I am in a healthy range for most everything except for my torso strength and arm flexibility.  This means I have to work on my abdominal and back muscles and that I cannot juggle bananas behind my back!  “Lucky George”, I think to myself.  Not only does he have limber limbs to juggle bananas and swing between trees, he also has a firm and fit torso.  There is no tree that I wish to train from at this time in my life but I think the inventors of monkey bars and jungle gyms had a brilliant idea when they created them for children.  Could it be that monkeys are the foremost scientist of our world?  I wonder what advice Curious George would give me for managing my finances.  Perhaps he would suggest that I make paper boats out of all of my bank statements and watch them float down a river!

Humour is serious business.  No pun intended but I am sincere when I say this.  As I transition writing styles from serious to humorous, I am making a correlation between my writing and life.  Switching abruptly to comedic stories brings up one question for me:  At what point does humour enter a serious situation in life?  The answer came to me quickly as I recalled an article I came across while researching an essay for college a few years ago.  It was a story about nurses who worked in an operating room and assisted doctors with life-saving procedures.  The article revealed that the nurses had posted a sign outside their operating room door for anxiously awaiting family members.  It stated that if laughter was heard from behind the doors, it was not their loved one that they were laughing about but rather it was just their way of coping with their work-related stress.  I love the story as it clearly illustrates how humour has an important role in life and that it can be a very powerful coping tool.

Life is filled with challenges.  My 9o year old friend, who is as sharp as a tack, summed it all up perfectly for me one day.  She said, “you need to be insane to stay sane.”  This is so very true at times.  When the pressure is on, sometimes all we can do is laugh to maintain our sanity.  A little bit of humour goes a long way in helping to keep the stress under control, not unlike the regulator of a pressure cooker.  Humour is a form of emotional release that helps to maintain the pressure within at manageable levels.  Without this, we might explode or implode, depending on our habits and style of coping.  Exploding is downright messy and imploding is no better.  If we do the latter, we might very well end up on the operating room table with nurses laughing over top of us, so we might as well laugh while we can!

Healthy humour is inviting and never hurtful.  Numerous studies reveal the physical benefits of hearty laughter which include reduced stress, lower blood pressure, and a stronger immune system.  We all know that hearty laughter exercises the abdominal muscles and relaxes the body.  That means that a hearty bout of laughter is just about as good as going to the gym for a workout!  When was the last time you had a really good belly laugh?

“Humour is reason gone mad” – Groucho Marx