You have a your own private workout gym for your sense of humor. A place to keep it toned and healthy. It's your imagination. And the good news is that if you know how to worry you know how to use your imagination. This means you have no reason not to start your humor exercises right now.

Worry is nothing but your imagination in chains. Humor is your imagination freed. There is no restricting your imagination. With it you can see yourself flying like a bird, slaying dragons, being President of the United States., zipping around like Peter Pan. It's your imagination that allows you to "see” yourself and your situation from other than the usual point of view. Most importantly your sense of humor needs your imagination.

But how do you bring the two together? By practice! That's the way you learned to talk, to walk., to ride your bike, to swim. So it is with imagination and humor. It's practice

And it's not difficult. A former editor of a humor magazine once wrote, "Day and night the staff thought funny and nothing else. We looked over everything for the joke that might be in it. Consequently, we came up with one-liners, laughable incongruities and cartoon ideas...” (emphasis added)

That's the way, you let (not force) your imagination to explore situations for the "joke that might be in it.” Not all of the time. Not 24-hours a day like the magazine staff did. That was their job. But you can practice enough to be proficiently aware of the humor in your living.

One humor workshop leader, Virginia Tooper of California, included a "humor walk” activity in her Humor Therapy session. Her groups took to the streets looking at the common and the ordinary through new sets of eyes by "thinking funny.” This is nothing more than letting their imagination key off of objects and events that met the eye and waited for something to show itself.

Try the humor walk yourself. You can do it any time, on the street, at work while walking down hallways, around home, standing in a line.

Signs are good to practice on. One I once saw in the post office: "Over 40,000 pieces of mail delivers on time every day.” My mind added, "And 80,000 pieces delivered late.” Not a side splitter but good enough for a little self pleasure.

Using this humor-walk idea in a workshop of my own, a couple came back to the group carrying a flyer promoting membership in a church hymnal society. The copy on the flyer

included the word "hymn” extensively. When the woman read aloud with we listeners construing "hymn” as "him,” the comic effect was rollicking. In fact, we had to take a recess too give time to recover from our laughter. By giving yourself permission to purposefully think funny, you will be well rewarded no matter where you are.

Being open and alert to humor does not mean closing yourself off to your other sensitivities. The sense of humor does not monopolize your system. Just as you can use your sense of sight, sound, and touch at the some time,so can you your your sense of humor in conjunction with other needs.

You can be in that heavy meeting, understand the seriousness of the deliberations, and at the same time see humor in it. Because of that you have freedom to be more responsive to the issues than you have been before.

It's too bad that common belief has it that humor is incidental to the important matters of life; The truth is that our mind and body need humor. Without it life cannot amount to much. It becomes but a dull routine, with pitifully small rewards for the labor involved. Life without humor must surely be hell.

Lord Houghton said that the sense of humor was the "just balance” in the faculties of man. So remember to keep that balance in whatever you do. Live your life with humor. You'll be richer for it. Imagination and practice is all you need.

(c) 2006 Cy Eberhart

Tell Your Friend