Lighten Up!!

I am not as an effective observer as some when it comes to people just going about their everyday rituals. I would be horrible as one of those old men that sit at malls and just give everyone who walks by the one thousand yard stare. I guess I consider myself a private person for the most part and thus I try to afford strangers a sense of their own privacy. This being said, I still am fascinated by different types of personalities that I come across on a regular day.

I think I'm a relatively friendly soul and try to be friendly and polite and show courtesies such as holding doors. (For you in the North, that is when you enter a store and someone is following fairly close and you actually hold the door for them.) What intrigues me is how people behave to me, often a stranger to them, as I interact. I enjoy friendly, witty folks who don't take life too seriously or themselves for that matter. What amazes me is how many people out in public have virtually no sense of humor and are constantly displaying a very serious tone to everything they do. You know the type I'm talking about. The individual whose face might crack if they were to initiate a smile and couldn't say a friendly or funny thing if their very life depended on it. How do those people go through life and actually ever enjoy anything?

I suppose that people are a product of their environment and upbringing which would explain my off the wall treatment to life. My Dad is so full of witticisms that I think he could probably hold an entire conversation using only quips. I think that indeed he has done that to me in the past and it can be frustrating when bombarded. My daughter once stated, when she lived at home, that she would really enjoy having one dinner without milk coming out her nose. That's our home in a nutshell. I am blessed to have a woman who has the same wacky humoristic tendencies. It's sort of like having Mr. & Mrs. Rodney Dangerfield (God rest his soul) at the dinner table. It can be crazy, zany, nutty and ridiculous and I wouldn't change a thing! I wonder what these aforementioned people are like at the dinner table. I guess they might just stare at each other with little to say of interest. The most overstated of all truisms is that life is too short. Perhaps someone needs to really experience death on a personal level to understand that statement fully. I have and I do.

To sum up this entry for today, I would say just two words would encapsulate it: "Lighten up!" It's not a sin to be serious when seriousness is dictated but more people in this world would be better off if they would just "Lighten up!"