Are you serious?!

Do not take life too seriously.  You will never get out of it alive. -Elbert Hubbard

While at my niece's softball tryouts tonight, I engaged in some heavy activity--people watching.  While I may or may not have spent over 3 hours working out today, people watching actually wore me out more than Zumba, weights, running or pilates.  The reason for this was simple:  I was enjoying each of the activities I was doing....all of them set to music, all them with a smiley instructor (even at 5:15 AM weights!! sickening!!), and all of them with others in the class who were there enjoying themselves. 

When Stephanie and I got out of the car, the first thing I heard was a father who was yelling at his 12 year old daughter for not doing something correctly at the softball tryouts.  The girl was in tears and the father was yelling loudly enough for others to hear.  I wanted to walk up to the guy and punch him in the face--not that I'm a violent person--but really?  The kid is twelve and is playing softball--what right does he have to take the fun out of something she enjoys??  Obviously I did not resort to jacking the dude up--but decided instead to make it a blog subject for the night.

A sign outside of a restaurant in VA.
Definitely NOT taken seriously.

When is the last time that  you allowed yourself to really just ENJOY an activity that you love, versus going through the motions?  When have you taken things too seriously and not allowed yourself just to have fun?  I'm pretty sure that when I'm on my death bed, I will not look back and ask myself why I had too much fun and didn't take life seriously enough.

One of my favorite things that the instructors at the gym remind us of during class is to smile.  It is easy to get caught up in the mechanics of the class, or to start to get mad because of a dance move we can't get, or a yoga pose that we can't hold, or a weight we can't press.  In the big scheme of things, are any of these situations ones that are impacting the quality of life that I'm experiencing?  Probably not....so hearing "SMILE--you can grit your teeth through this" is a good reminder about just having fun.

What is something you did recently to step back and have fun, rather than taking things too seriously?  What do you do that allows you to smile and remember that the true purpose of life is living?