Many years ago the kids and I watched a video of a man laughing at a tram stop. As a result of his joy, smiles beamed from all of the surrounding faces. When someone laughs, it’s contagious – it’s natural to want to laugh too!

This made us think about flash mobs and how much the crowd watching really enjoys the moment – the break from the doldrums of every day life. It’s so easy to get stuck in the auto-pilot setting of life that routine tends to create.

We too found ourselves falling into this boring habit, one day rolling into the next. It would begin at 6am and go straight through until we collapsed at 10:30pm. One day into the next, weeks melting together. If one man at a bus stop could bring so much joy why couldn’t we?

At the time we were spending upwards of two hours commuting in the car each day. We’d listen to the radio, chat about our day, and play video games to pass the time. We noticed commuters in their cars looking haggard from a day of work and having that distant and exhausted look of just wanting to get home. We decided it would be fun to have a dance party in our car. We thought that it would be liberating to just let loose, sing at the top of our lungs and laugh. We didn’t care what anyone else thought about our antics and we hoped it would spread joy to the people around us. We’ve been doing this for going on 3 years now. It’s quite fun!

I just read a post from the Happy Pear boys in Ireland about being playful – that we should find our inner child and do something outrageous. Many of the comments were from people around the world sharing what makes them feel like a kid again, what crazy thing they tried and had a real laugh at themselves about. I loved reading through all of the comments. I could feel the joy in each sentence. I popped outside for a run that day, music on, I sang out loud my entire run. Haha! I’ve seen people do this before and I have to admit I thought they were a bit odd. I have to tell you, it’s very fun and freeing. I laughed at myself and was floating the rest of my day.