I’ve been trying to find the source for a particular quote that has been bothering me for quite some time. Apparently, “Dr Fry, a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical School, found that children laugh an average of 300 times per day, while adults only laugh between 15 and 100 times per day.” This observation has been repeated almost endlessly by just about everyone who is pushing happiness, humor, laughter, and all those positive things we so desperately wish we were feeling.

 

My observations, though not conflicting with Dr. Fry, are based on at least 10 years of grandparentage and 40 years of parenthoodness. It is this:

Children cry at least as often as they laugh, if not more.

Oddly, as I get older, I find myself crying more easily, and more often. And I kind of like it. I’m not sure if I laugh more often. But I’ve always been a laugh-er.

If we are to take any message from Dr. Fry’s research and my personal findings, it might be that adults would probably laugh again the way they laughed as children … if they let themselves cry more often, as they did when they were children.

I grow old. I cry more.

It is a gift.